


Halloween Legacy

by unamyuzedhorrorfan (unamyuzedwriter)



Category: Friday the 13th - Fandom, Halloween - Fandom, Horror - Fandom, Slasher Movies - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Halloween 6, Jason Goes To Hell, Other, The Curse of Michael Myers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-20 02:03:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 38,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20219968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unamyuzedwriter/pseuds/unamyuzedhorrorfan
Summary: A crossover and continuation of Jason Goes to Hell (1993) and The Curse of Michael Myers (1995). Over twenty years had passed since those events. Steven Doyle, the son of Michael Myers, and Stephanie Freeman, the great-granddaughter of Pamela Voorhees, are now adults in their mid-twenties. They had met in collage, dated for several months, but the past came between them they had agreed to go their separate ways... but not without creating a new problem and discovering old secrets.





	Halloween Legacy

**Author's Note:**

> This is a companion piece to the tumblr ask blog sonofmichaelmyers.tumblr.com 
> 
> if you have any questions, concerns, or comments about this fic please read through the ask blog first. it is only like 100 posts, and the ask box is open.
> 
> No actual rape/incest/child abuse happens in the story, however it has happened in canon and is talked about within the story itself.

May 1.

The phone chimed. It chimed long enough to repeat the song a second time. It was one of the default ringtones. Steven never thought anything about customizing his phone, nobody had a custom song nor notification to tell one another apart. Besides, nobody calls anybody anymore, except for robocallers. Any sane person would leave a text first then call. It had to be a telemarketer, someone telling him his car warranty has expired and wanted to sell him insurance. 

It was asscrack-in-the-morning early. The sun wasn’t even out yet, Steven glanced up to the red numbers of the clock on the table beside his bed: 4: 09 am. His alarm was set to go off an hour from now, time enough for him to get an early jog and get something to eat before heading to work. The phone went silent. It began again when he lowered his head back onto the pillow. It wasn’t a robocaller, it was a real person. 

Steven fumbled forward and grabbed the phone and looked at the number. It was Stephanie’s number. He slid aside the answer icon and croaked out: “Hey, Steph? What’s going on?”

It wasn’t Stephanie. The voice startled Steven a bit. It was a man’s voice. “Hello? Is this Steven?”

“Um… yeah? Who’s this?”

“Oh! I’m sorry….” and off to the side the guy said: “this is going to be awkward…”

“What?”

“Sorry. My bad: I’m Steve Freeman, Stephanie’s father.”

“Err….” The hamster in Steven’s brain fell off its little wheel for a moment, it was too early and he was too tired to think. He shoveled up as much as he could about what Stephanie said about the man, besides that she was named after him and frequently joked about the sameness of their names. The hamster got back onto the wheel and Steven sat bolt upright in bed: “Did something happen? Is she alright?”

“She is doing fine…” Steve trailed off, clearing his throat and cautiously… wincingly adding: “They both are doing fine.”

Steven cocked his head aside, doglike, like he was trying to stir the lone marble around the maze in his head. “...Both?”

“Oh no--” the older man on the phone breathed. Steven could hear the man kicking himself on the other side of the line, the phone crackling as it was fumbled in the other man’s hands. Steve Freeman was saying something like “too much like her mother…” but it was muffled. 

“Um? Sir?” Steven tried to get his attention. “Steve? Hello? What’s going on?”

“Steven!” came his sharp, over exaggerated pleasantry. “When was the last time you’ve spoken to Steph?”

Steven didn’t need to see the man to know Steve was cracking at the seams. He thought for a moment… He hadn’t heard from her in the past few months. He called her last on Christmas to see how her new job was how she was doing, she didn’t have much to say and said she was busy and would call when she had time. She didn’t. He answered: “Christmas, maybe New Years?.... What did you mean by ‘both’ Sir?”

“She just had a baby,” Steve answered, strained. 

Steven froze, the hamster running off with his lone marble. “What…?”

“A little after midnight this morning,” he sounded exasperated. “A boy. No name yet-- She really didn’t tell you anything?”

“N...no?” Steven heard a cracking sound in his ear, it took him a moment to realize that he was crushing his own god damn phone. The screen now had a long jagged line running down the middle of it. “Did she tell you it was mine…?”

“What? Sorry, there’s hissing on the line.” the voice came back warbled. “Yes. She told us. We also knew you two dated last year, Facebook you know.”

Steven glared off into the darkness of his room. Steph hadn’t updated her Facebook account since November. She announced that she moved back to New Jersey and was with her family, and even updated her status to “single.” There was nothing posted about having a baby, or that she was going to. He didn’t know her to be a liar, and she wouldn’t tell her parents it was his if it really wasn’t. Was she really that afraid of Him?

“Are you still there?”

“Yeah…” Steven whispered. “This might sound like an odd question--”

“It’ll take a lot to be considered ‘odd’ after what I’ve seen, kid,” Steve interjected.

“I guess,” Steven looked down to the Cross of Brigid on his left forearm. “What’s your stance on blood curses?”

Steve had gone quiet before he carefully answered: “That’s some serious business, Steven. How much has Steph told you about her family?”

“Less than she knows about mine,” he answered. 

Mr. Freeman gave a warbled sigh: “Her mother’s family, in the past, had dabbled in Necromancy. Well… more than dabbled. They have a zombified murderer in the family: Jason Voorhees.”

“I heard of him, somewhat….” Steven balled his hand into a fist, watching the tendon under his flesh pulse under the cross marked on his arm. What he knew of Jason Voorhees was from the news. The killer was kept frozen in cryo sleep in a special facility built near his stalking grounds in New Jersey, a “superjail” made just for him. “Mine... My birth father... He is Michael Myers.”

Steve had gone quiet on the other end for a moment before giving a low whistle. “No kidding? The Halloween Babysitter Murderer? Is he still… around?”

“Very much,” Steven could still smell the incense in the house. Today was May the first. May Day, or the day of Beltane, a holy day. A day that is the antithesis of Samhain, All Saint’s Day and Halloween. It is a day of fire, of passion, and of life. And a son was born upon this day, his son, a child that he was unaware of. The old gods must be laughing at them.

“And you had told her that before she left you?”

Steven felt the knife in his stomach twisting, “She met him and I had to tell her.”

Steven could still hear the man’s deep breaths on the other end of the line so knew he didn’t just hang up or lose connection, but the silence went on far too long.

“It was like a few weeks before she left for New Jersey,” Steven added. “We had stopped dating though, she basically kicked me into the proverbial friendzone.”

“But you still got her knocked up after that,” Freeman retorted. Steven’s weariness mingled with the icy statement.

Steven grumbled, “I know-- If it was when I am thinking, we were both a bit too drunk at the time. We went out with some friends to congratulate her on the new job. She was on birth control, at least she told me she was while we were actually dating, taking the shot or something like it.”

“That sounds a lot like what she told us. She didn’t know until she already moved here.” Steve gave a low groan before continuing: “You know her mother, Jessica, ran away with Steph when she was a baby, just to get out of here, away from her family. I am not surprised by Steph’s reaction, her mom probably even encouraged it. I am just... disappointed. In them, not you.”

“I’m sorry, about all of this.”

“No, don’t apologize for something you didn’t know about,” he said in a firm voice. 

“I just don’t know what I should be doing right now,” Steven could feel the knot in his throat become tighter. 

“Call whoever you need to and get on a plane: that’s what you should be doing with the rest of your morning.”

“It’s not that simple,” Steven said through his teeth.

“Yes it is. You should come here and meet your son.” 

“Blood curse, remember?”

“Huh?”

Steven sighed in frustration: “I am going to do exactly what you said, BUT I need to come prepared. For his safety and yours, or else some very bad people are going to come after him and turn him into a stab-happy murderer.”

“Wait, what kind of curse is this anyways? I mean, I could barely understand all the shit about the Necronomicon. My wife’s grandmother started all of that shit. She killed a lot of people, and Jason killed a hundred more.”

Steven grimaced, rubbing his eyes. “A cult put a curse upon my family. The Avatar of Samhain. It was placed upon my father as a child, the cult used him to murder-- to sacrifice his older sister Judith to their gods. They had him under their control for decades. When his younger sister Laurie Strode was a teenager they had him go after her as well. She escaped and he was in their custody again, but not until after he killed a dozen people. Laurie died mysteriously in a car accident a few years later, but she left behind a daughter named Jamie. Michael Myers was sent after her. He did not succeed and more people died. The Cult re-captured him and kidnapped Jamie. They were prisoners for another five years… they were waiting on Jamie to become a teenager, old enough to have a child… they made her have his child…”

“Holy shit,” Steve swore.

“I wasn’t meant to be alive,” Steven sighed.

“Hey, don’t say that--”

“No, I mean they were going to kill me. They were going to have my father kill me for their ritual. As a sacrifice. But I was saved, someone helped my mom escape with me. She died hiding me from them. A man named Tom Doyle took me in, and with the help of Dr. Loomis and Kara Strode, they managed to stop the Cult and in the process my father broke free of their control.”

“You had said that Steph ran into your father, your birth father,” Steve poignantly reminded him. “And that’s why you had told her all of this? I am seeing why she didn’t want to tell you about the baby. And now I’m wondering why I didn’t just respect her judgment on this...”

“Please, Sir--Steve,” Steven winced inwardly. “It is bad. It is also shitty being blindsided by this. I have a life as well, and instead of planning to have children in the future, I have to adjust to having one right now.”

“Not if your father is still in the picture,” he warned.

Steven rubbed his face, “Look. I understand that. This isn’t the most ideal situation right now.”

“You bet your ass it isn’t.”

Steven pursed his lips, the phone in his hand desperately trying not to crack in half. “I’m trying to make things better.”

“Cut ties with the axe murderer, first of all--” he bit back.

“First-of-all, he’s been fighting the Cultists the past twenty-some years, the same assholes that wanted me dead and will come after my son!” Steven cut in, angry that this stranger would dare to give him advice unasked. “And secondly, he’s fucking old and beat to hell. He’s got at most another ten-years left in him before he keels over of old age. Until then, he’s like a fucking elephant that can sit wherever the fuck he wants. And anything short of using an uzi, I can’t get rid of him!”

“Fuck you.”

“See you tomorrow, fuck wad!” Steven hung up the phone and then tossed it across the room, finally putting the device out of its misery. He buried his face in his hands, fingers pulling on the fringe of hair. He wrinched the pillow out from beneath him and screamed obscenities into it. Exhausted, he flopped back onto his bed, biting tears streaming down his burning face.

What is he going to do? He had plans. Things he still wanted to do. He was going to go to Dublin next fall, to live there for the next six years as he finished his degree. He still wanted to go, but wondered how he was going to balance his life in America and in Ireland. Steph wouldn’t want to leave her job at the Museum, that was her dream job, and he was still working towards attaining his own dream job. 

He wanted to marry her months ago, when he made the choice to tell her about his life. They would’ve got married and have kids five years from now after he got his degree and was starting his career. Their professions were so similar, an archaeologist and a historian. That was how they met, their paths crossing in their pursuit of knowledge. Even their dark secrets were so much alike. So much death and suffering inherited from the past and the yearning need to break free of it. But he never was able to ask her. Steph told him “no” before he could. If it wasn’t for that weekend a week before she left for New Jersey, when they had slipped into comfortable and familiar ways and created this child. A son, only hours old; so new he doesn’t have a name yet. 

“How long have you been there?” 

The answer he received was having his car keys dropped onto his chest, followed by something square, plastic, and heavier. Steven lowered his arm from over his face. It was the hand-held to the landline. The shape in the dark wasn’t finished “handing” him things. There was the notebook with all his back-up numbers in it and a phone book that was three years out of date. 

“The internet is a thing, dad.” Steven let the phonebook flop onto the floor with a chunk. He reached over to turn on the lamp on the nightstand. Myers stood at his bedside, towering over him. The old man was disheveled, sporting that week-old salt-and-pepper beard, and wearing week-old dirty clothes of Steven’s blue t-shirt and flannel pants. 

Myers lifted his hands up signing: Bring home pictures. 

“I’m probably going to be gone for a week, maybe more,” Steven said.

Myers picked up part of the broken phone.

“Maybe less.”

Myers spelt out: Today is Beltane. 

“Is that a good or bad omen?”

Good, more than bad. The fae rule over this holy day. They must be evoked to protect the child. Their ways are not good nor evil, different than man’s ways.

“Different? How?” Steven asked and signed at the same time.

They think sideways.

Myers then shrugged, unable to convey what he properly wanted. 

“Sideways…” he repeated in thought. 

Myers handed him a sheet of paper, one that was torn from a notepad. It had instructions written on them for a spell. The runes were scralled along the bottom under the description: 

Call the sun god Belenus to bless the child with his light and give offerings of honey mead, yellow flowers, and lambs milk to the fae for their guidance and fortune. Then burn a switch of thorns and trinkets and anoint the child with the ash and cleanse him with pure spring water. Completing this will give the child the ability to turn away the darkness if it ever comes to him.

“Kind of like what the Blessing of Brigid is doing towards me?”

Myers signed: Almost. You are invisible, unnoticed. This child’s energy is different than our own. He will repel the darkness.

“Ah! Like magnets turned onto their polls.” 

Michael nodded once. 

Imbolc was a holiday in early February, and in the winter-half of the year like Samhain. In the modern era, the holiday has often been forgotten about along with Lammas/Lughnasadh, which was in early August, in Summer. The two holidays are not as popular as Beltane and Samhain, but are just as important to the faith. Children are often born around the festivals of Imbolc and Lammas, as children conceived around Samhain are born near Lammas, and children conceived around Beltane are born around Imbolc. And if a parent wished to have a child near to the festivities of Beltane and Samhain, they would have to conceive within the two weeks following Imbolc (for Samhain) and Lammas (for Beltane) (a more contemporary equivalent has been calling children born in early-to-mid November “Valentine’s Day Babies.” ) 

Imbolc is a popular holiday for weddings, as it is perhaps the most peaceful, non-chaotic of the main four holidays. It celebrates spring and new life. With Steven and Michael both having their birthdays in October near Samhain, their energies were also attached to Imolic, as it was the time of their creation. Steven more so. Michael had, at least alluded to, that the Cult had forced him and Jamie through a marriage ceremony prior to Steven’s conception. It wasn’t a legal marriage, it wasn’t recognized by the government, but it was witnessed and done by the faith (even if the faith was also an occult one). The rituals surrounding Steven’s conception and birth had tied him to the Imbolc holiday as much as it did Samhain. 

The new baby, Steven knew, was conceived between August 10th and 12th. Stephanie was going to be leaving for Princeton the following week. So that Friday, a bunch of her friends and former coworkers got together to celebrate and go out for the weekend. They pooled their money to rent out a penthouse apartment for the next three days and after the movie, dinner, and clubbing on Friday Night through Saturday Morning: the whole group kind of crashed at the apartment getting shit-faced on a stockpile of booze and weed. It didn’t take long for Steph and Steven to gravitate back to one another in their inebriated states and have one last “go” at one another for the road. 

Steven gathered the handheld and the notepad to his side. “If I can talk Steph into bringing him to Haddonfield: would you like to see him?”

Myers shrugged: All babies are the same.

“Perhaps, but this is your first grandchild.”

Myers cocked his head: I will take you to the airport and bring the car home.

Steven sighed, “Fine.” 

***

The earliest flight Steven was able to get was in the afternoon to New York and he purchased a bus ticket the rest of the way to Princeton New Jersey. He would just miss the evening visiting hours, and it would be tomorrow morning at the earliest he’d get to see his son. Elsewise, he spent most of this morning on the phone sitting in front of his computer. He first talked to his boss Ellie to call off work and had to explain to her that he was suddenly a father and if Steph doesn’t kick his ass back to Chicago it might be more like family leave. She wished him luck, congratulations, and sympathy all at once. 

Secondly, he called Tom, Kara, and his sister (their daughter) Lex to tell them the news and ask for Lex to come get Tilly, their pet tortoise. Kara gave him an earful. She talked about how irresponsible he was, how hard it was being a single mother to a child with an absent father, and how lucky they were to have one another because it could have been a lot worse. 

Tom was more sympathetic, but Steven could hear the strain in his adopted father’s voice. He had asked about what he planned to do about Dublin, Steven didn’t know yet. Everything was suddenly an unknown. For a while he thought everything had slotted itself into a predictable pattern and he knew what was coming next, but life flipped over the game board and all the pieces are all still in the air.

Alexandra “Lex” Doyle was ecstatic about the news. It wouldn’t be the first time she would be an aunt, her half-brother Danny had two kids by his ex-wife, but she liked the idea that the baby was Steven’s kid. Lex was younger than him by five years and he was the “big bro” that was around more than Danny, whom was already a teenager by the time she was born (and even then he wasn’t around much at all). 

“There needs to be like a psa or something ‘don’t drink and fuck’ you know?”

Steven gave a long sigh, “It would massively curve population growth rate if people were that sensable.”

“But didn’t you wear a condom or someshit?”

“Our drunk-brains were running on assumptions, and we both assumed her birth control was still working.” 

“That sucks man. But hey, that kid’s prob going to be the cutest mf. Ya got a name picked out for him yet?”

“No, and I broke my smartphone so I can’t get texts and pics. I’m going to have to swing by BestBuy and get my phone number transferred onto a new phone on my way to the airport.” 

“Dude, you broke your phone?”

“I cracked it against my thick skull then threw it against the wall.”

Lex gave a snort and a laugh. “That bad huh?”

“Her dad called me, not her,” he moped.

“Busted.”

“But like, I had to tell him everything like it was fucking laundry day.”

“How’d the cat take it?”

“Indifferently.”

“I’m not taking care of the cat. I’m just getting Tilly and bailing.”

“I don’t expect you to. Cats are independent after all. I’m just going to leave the window open a crack and food in the bowl.”

“I’m I going to have any problems when I pop in?”

“Is there?” Steven leaned over to look at his father sitting on the couch next to him watching the early-morning news on the TV. Myers eyes moved to the side before his head turned to face him.

“Nope, none.” 

Lex hummed, “You’d prob be landing in Jersey before I even get up there.”

“You can keep’er for like a few months to make up for it, she likes you.”

“That’s cool. I just need to fix the pen for her.”

“Hey, she’s yours as much as mine.”

“Unless your kid takes a like to her, then I’m the one out of the will.”

Steven laughs. “That would be a headline: Family feuds over ownership of 80-year-old tortoise.”

“It’ll be some Anna Nicole shit going on, we’ll all be dead before we figure out who owns her.”

“Oooh, ouch.”

“Hey, you’d better be living until your 90.”

“I’ll try my very hardest.”

“I’m holding you to that or else I’m going to beat your corpse with my walker.”

Steven gave another laugh, “Don’t they put tennis balls on the legs of those?”

“Mine would be outfitted with spring-loaded stilettos hidden in the legs!”

“Don’t be bringing any of those stilettos up this way when you come. I don’t think my apartment would be able to survive such an epic knife fight.”

Lex made a faux karate yell into the phone. “Gotta cash deez hands bro!”

“I’ll text you when I get my new phone.”

“Send pics.”

“I will-- later goblin”

“Yeah, bye-eee.”

***

“What did you do?” Jennifer hissed into her husband’s ear. Steve had pulled her out into the hall, telling her it was urgent. He had lead her into one of the family-waiting rooms down the hall from the room their daughter and newly born grandson were. He pulled out a cellphone from his pocket, it was in a silver jewel case.

“Isn’t that Steph’s phone?” Jennifer Kimble-Freeman snatched it out of his hand. “You haven’t been spying on her, have you?”

“I know I shouldn’t have…” he lowered his voice, encouraging her to keep her own volume down. “But I called Steven.”

“You what---” she gritted her teeth.

“He didn’t even know she was pregnant.”

Her eyebrows crawled up her forehead. “No shit?”

“I kind of wish I hadn’t.”

“You?” Jenny scoffed. “You who’d fought tooth and nail to see your baby girl?”

“Yes, and that’s why I called him. I know what it was like to be told to scram out of my kid’s life.”

“But?”

“But…” he sighed, scratching the back of his head. “It’s a wasps nest our girl got herself into.”

“It can’t be as bad as my mom and grandma.”

“It’s practically the same thing.”

Jenny furrowed her brows together. “He’s not like… a murderer?”

“I don’t know, I wouldn’t rule that out though.”

“What is it then? Tell me!” 

“Have you heard of a town in Illinois called Haddonfield?”

“I don’t know about Illinois, but there’s a Haddonfield in New Jersey next to Voorhees Township. And growing up, kids from school thought it was some kind of joke to keep pointing that out.”

“Because---?” he prodded. 

She pursed her lips, “I don’t know.”

“The baby’s father and his family live in Haddonfield Illinois. Where--? In the 80’s…?” he continued to troll her a long.

“Fuck if I know, asshole.”

Steve sighed, defeated. “Steven is the biological son of a guy named Michael Myers, Haddonfield’s Halloween Killer.”

“O-o-o-h…” Jenny shifted her weight and folded her arms. She had heard of Myers when people talked about spree and serial murderers, at least those that were prominent prior to the wave of School, Mall, and Concert shooters. He was often referenced in articles alongside her grandmother and uncle, Pamela and Jason Voorhees, and other names like Charles Lee Ray and Frederick Kruger. “That is pretty bad, but isn’t he just like a normal guy that kills a bunch of people every ten-years or something? He’s not like some nigh-unkillable zombie death machine.” 

“Steven seems to believe that there is a blood curse in his family and our grandson is in danger from Cultists,” he explained. “Steph… she met Myers, apparently, and along with this cult story…”

“You wouldn’t have called him if you’d known?”

“I don’t know, Jen,“ he scratched at the stubble on his chin. “Steven might be an alright guy. I didn’t get to talk to him very long.”

“You rubbed each other the wrong way.”

“Yeah,” he hung his head low. “He said he was coming though. He hasn’t called or texted back though.”

“Not even to ask about the baby?”

Steve shook his head.

“Huh…”

“I’ll send him a message on my own phone. I don’t think he’d want to keep sending texts through Steph’s.”

“How did you get into her phone anyways?” she shook the device at him.

“I saw her use the knock code a few times before, so I memorized it.”

“You sneek.”

“Old habits.”

Jenny sighed. “I’ll tell her what you’ve done when she wakes up. Meantime, you work on getting your ass out of the fire with that boy. Keep calling and texting him until he picks up. You invited him here against Steph’s wishes: damage control is your responsibility.”

Jenny pocketed the cellphone, turned on her heel, and went to go fight a war with her own daughter. 

Steve didn’t stop her, he learned it was better to not get in her way. His own selfishness (selflessness?) caused this, but it wouldn’t have sat well with his conscious if that boy Steven didn’t know, regardless of what he now knew. He wished Steph would have told all of them the truth in the first place, it isn’t like Steven’s personal situation was outside of their own wheelhouse of past experiences. They could have dealt with it as a family. But Steph was an adult and fully capable of making her own choices. She wanted the child, but not the father’s familial baggage: it was almost the same reasons why Jenny took Steph as a baby. Mother, and now Daughter, wanted to cut ties with the bloodshed of the past. With Jenny’s uncle out of the picture for the foreseeable future, and the Voorhees name buried along with him, they were able to move on. This Steven, he was still too close, trapped by the past like Diane, Jennifer’s mother. Her life was ended by the undead half-brother their mother wanted more than her, the living daughter.

Steve took his own cell phone from his back pocket, unlocked it, and hit the message icon...

***

It was 10am before Steven was able to get into BestBuy to purchase a new cell. He was the first person in the door, the sales rep wasn’t even prepared yet and it took almost 20-min before they even sat down to start programing the newly purchased phone. Steven “suggested” to Michael that he should stay in the Nissan. That lasted all of five minutes before Myers came in and ghosted around the store making the sales team and other customers leery. Steven had to wrangle him up and told him to sit in the chair next to him at the sales counter. 

It was almost instantaneous, the flood of messages and miss-call notifications springing up on the phone as soon as the proper emails and registration updates hit the system. The sales person was surprised, though they attempted to hide it behind a faux lie that it wasn’t the first time they’d seen that happen. Steven swapped out the connection to the computer with the rapid-charge backup battery so he didn’t have to keep the phone plugged into the counter as he read through the messages. He handed all the packaging to his father to hold and signed to him that they are going back to the car. Steven thanked the sales rep for their time and scammed. 

Steven only saw some of the messages in the pull down menu. The number wasn’t one in his cloud contacts list, though by the nature of them it was Steph’s father trying to get ahold of him. The main gist of the messages were asking where he was, what he was doing, why he wasn’t responding, and calling him (to be polite) a jerk. 

Steven wrote a quick message in response: 

(phone broke had to buy a new one)  
(store didn’t open until 10)

The phone vibrated and rang in his hand. Steven picked it up: “Hey.”

“Is this Steven?” it was a woman’s voice that talked to him. Well, “at him” at least. The woman almost sounded like Stephanie, so it must be her mother Jennifer. 

“Yes it is.”

“Steph said you can come.” 

“That’s nice to know, ma’am. Because I had already paid for the ticket, my flight leaves at 3pm.”

“I hope you leave that attitude in Chicago, Mister.”

“I’m sorry if I am sounding just a little bit pissy: especially after being mushroomed for these past nine months.” Fed shit and kept in the dark…

“Steve told me what you said to him and Steph confirmed that it was true. I have half-a-mind to cut you off like a dead limb.”

“What about your other half?” Steven quickly waved off Myers glaring look, stage-whispering at him to “watch the road.”

“Who else is there with you…?” she drawled the question out, dry and frigid. 

“A roommate,” he answered. “They’re taking my car after dropping me off at the airport-- don’t change the subject, Ma’am.”

Steven could tell that she clamped her hand over the phone, or at least is holding it against her chest. He could barely make out the question: “Does he have a roommate?”

Steven groaned. He didn’t need to hear the response to know who the question was pointed to and the answer that could be given, if she told the truth. 

When Jennifer returned to the phone her voice was a little higher, almost keening: “Is he going to come after my grandbaby?”

“Only if y’all try running off with him, I suspect,” Steven answered honestly. 

His father shrugged with one shoulder, then actually thought on it for a while. He made a motion with one hand to indicate an airplane and then water. Right, he can’t go overseas. 

“I don’t want him around here, let’s make that clear.” Her attempt to sound more confident and assertive was noted. “We’ve had enough problems with people like him in the past.”

“Like your very own family, Ms. Voorhees?”

Jennifer made a long sigh and not in the receiver said “I can’t believe this is happening again.” She cleared her throat before finally speaking directly to him: “Please, don’t call me that. My mother was only his half-sister, they had different fathers, and different last names. And he killed my mother and stole her body.”

In the corner of his vision, Steven could catch Myers roll his eyes and give a chuffing snort. Myers was actually laughing about it. Steven put the phone against his chest to speak to his father: “I’m aware that this is a big clusterfuck and ironically funny.”

“This isn’t funny!” he could hear her shout into the phone.

Steven put the phone back to his face: “Sure it is. Outside of the sheer amount of coincidences that this happened: the fact that this child was kept a secret in order to protect each party from the other’s dark past, when those secrets were strangely the same thing: it is just dripping with irony.”

“It still isn’t funny, Steven.”

“Steph?” He felt his heart jump into his throat at the sound of her voice. “I’m so sorry…”

“Just… come here soon.”

“Wait! Steph!”

“What?” she was tired, he could hear it in her voice.

“Is he… doing alright?”

“Yeah, he’s sleeping off his first meal right now. He had a very big day today.”

“Oh, ok… Are you doing alright?”

“Other than recovering from squeezing out an 8lb pumpkin from between my legs last night, I am doing fine.”

Steven couldn’t help but laugh a bit. He sniffed back tears that wanted to crawl down his face. “Do… did you… Does--” he cleared out the knot before spitting out: “A name?”

“I’ve been favoring Noah.”

“Noah,” Steven rolled it around on his tongue. “That’s a good name.”

“If you can come up with a middle name--” 

“Ok. I’ll think of something.”

“I’ll send you a pic,” she paused before adding: “From my own phone. I’m on my dad’s phone right now.”

“I would like that very much. Thank you.”

Steph made a small hum, one that was just too shy to be considered a chuckle. “Love you, talk again soon.”

“I love you too,” he said and heard the line die with a little bloop. 

The phone gave a little “twip” as a message came through on the phone. Steven looked at it, it was an attachment. And a second one came a moment later. The first picture was when the baby, Noah, was only moments old, his necked body all red, wet, and wrinkly, on his exhausted mother’s chest. The second picture was a more recent one, Noah was in a white nighty and had on a blue stocking hat. He was awake, his eyes still newborn dark, being propped up into a reclined position by a pillow. This one was the more “traditional” first picture that the hospital takes for the family. He was cute, as most babies were. He didn’t have any distinguishing features to set him apart from other babies, which he thought was a good thing in his mind: to be normal. Maybe in a few days, or in a month, Noah would start to favor either Steph or him in appearance. 

Steven waited until they were at a stoplight before showing Michael the second of the two pictures sent. He studied it for a moment and gave a quick nod. The old man’s expression was only that of mild interest, which went back to neutrality once that was satiated and his eyes went back to looking forward to the road. 

Steven leaned back into the passenger seat, going back to admiring the photo on the screen. He was going to see this child, his child, Noah, tomorrow. He would get to hold him in his arms. He didn’t even know he was going to be a father yesterday, and seeing the child made everything more contextual, more real. He was going to fight for Noah, for his future, one that he didn’t have to worry about murderers, occultis, or necromancers coming after him just for being who he was. 

***

They talked again around one o’clock. Steven still had a couple hours between when he got to the airport and when his flight would start to board. Steph told him that she was going to be sent home in the morning. The hospital was discharging her after 24-hours because she had a natural birth instead of a caesarian section. Steven promised that he would be there to pick her up, but he would still have to get a hotel room for the night and probably for the next few weeks. Steph said that he shouldn’t have to. She was planning on staying with her mom and dad for the next two months, at least until her maternity leave was up, and it wouldn’t be an issue if they shared a room. Steven assured her that money wasn’t a problem, in fact he was willing to pay for any hospital costs the insurance company won’t pick up. 

“Can you afford to do that?” Steph asked, worried. He was a full-time student with a part-time job at a gym. He drives a 10-year-old Nissan, wears shoes until they are rotting off his feet, and barely even dresses in anything other than a t-shirt and jeans (athletic wear being the only exception). He was smart, yes, and from what she understood most of his education was already paid for through scholarships or grants… 

“Ten-times over,” Steven told her. There was no way she could mistake the assurity of the statement. It was as if it was a conspiracy being shared, the sort that you didn’t talk about in the open, in public. 

“I’ll take your word on it,” she dared to say. Steph looked at the clear-sided crib beside her bed at the swaddled sleeping baby next to her. She remembered there was something else she needed to tell him: “Oh, I got most of the birth certificate filled out. It is official, your name is on it as his father.”

“Are we still going with Noah?” She could hear him preen over the phone. She pictured him with a big grin across his blushing red face. 

“You don’t like it?”

“I do, actually. Lots of people are using biblical names these days. It is one of the better ones, a simple one,” he assured her. “Is there any kind of parameters for a middle name, like any automatic ‘no’ names? Just so I don’t get my heart set on one and find out it has too much baggage.”

“No boy names that start with ‘J,’” it was one of the big “no’s,” one her own family agreed to: “They are too common…”

Steven didn’t even ask why, just adding: “Got it. So like naming him after my mom would be out, her name was Jamie. It is a gender neutral name.”

“Speaking of--Try not to name him after anybody.” 

“I promise not to get anywhere close to my father’s name,” he chuckled a bit. “Besides, his middle name is Audrey. He fucking hates it.”

“Yeesh,” she winced. “What about yours? You aren’t like Steven Ellen Doyle and didn’t want to tell me?”

“Andrew,” he mused. 

Steph snickered. “Sad.”

“Ye-ah. I’ll make sure it doesn’t spell anything too embarrassing.”

Steph looked up as a nurse came into the room and leaned over the crib. Steph’s parents had left to go have lunch with her younger brothers, Roy and Brian. They didn’t have a very big family, her mother was an only child and it wasn’t like she had any cousins to speak of. Her father’s parents had died when he was a teenager, he often talked about the “wild streak” he had afterwards that often got himself in and out of jail. 

“Where are you going with him?” Steph addressed the nurse. 

The nurse had started to roll the crib back out of the room. She stopped to look back at Steph and smiled: “Oh, we’re just talking him back to the nursery until his next feeding.”

“You don’t have to do that, I can look after him.”

“Hey, Steph, what’s going on?” Steven’s voice came through the speaker.

“Just a nurse…” She then turned to the nurse, who had resumed rolling the crib out. “Hey! I said ‘No.’”

“Don’t worry Miss Freeman. He’ll be alright. Get your rest.” The woman had to be about fifty, thirty or forty pounds overweight, and dressed in colorful scrubs. There wasn’t anything else very remarkable about her. She looked like any nurse that you’d find at any hospital across the world. 

Steven was speaking on the phone but not in the phone. “What? What is it?”

Steven then shouted into the phone: “STEPH! Don’t let her take him!”

“What? Why?” She turned her attention to the phone.

“Don’t trust the doctors! Don’t trust the nurses!” he hurriedly explained. The nurse pushed crib containing the child out the door.

“Huh?” Steph untangled the blanket around her legs and stood, wobbed on her first two steps, but quickly recovered. “Hey! Get back here!”

“You put my name in the system,” she could hear him shout. “They know.”

Steph went out the door. She came to a sudden stop when the crib was jammed into her midsection, pushing her back into the room. An orderly, or doctor, in a white long coat was on the other side of it, he was keeping her from leaving. The crib was empty, she could see the nurse, with her baby, scurrying down the hallway over this man’s shoulder. 

“Get back here!” She cried. “Let me through!”

The man just pushed her further into the room. He knocked the crib out from between them and tackled her. She hit him with the cellphone, the only thing she had in her hands. He snatched her wrists and dragged her small frame to the bed. She could hear Steven calling, no shouting, her name through the phone, it was now on the floor under the bed. The man pinned her down by his weight and jabbed something into her thigh. She continued to fight, but her arms started to feel like spaghetti, and her mind and hearing became muddled… she slowed… becoming weak… then nothing…

***

Steven called her name a few more times, and heard nothing. She either dropped her phone or something happened to her. Either way she wasn’t going to call back any time soon. Steven hung up the phone, he turned over to his father. The old man was at his shoulder, close so he could hear the phone conversation. 

Steven reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He grabbed a wad of twenties, it was about $400 if Steven remembered, and handed it to his father. “Get to the car, start driving to New Jersey. It’ll take 13 hours, but it is better than nothing. I’m going to call Steve. Then Tom and Kara.”

Steven wished he could have got another plane ticket, but his father was on some super do-not-fly list. From what he understood, the government was still very much aware of Michael Myers being alive and have made some recompense for his continual existence (most of it is treating him as if he was an alien or bigfoot: he doesn’t exist, he’s dead, or it’s a hoax), but there were some minor hitches: being banned from setting foot on any commercial aircraft was one of those. 

His father’s hand clasped onto his shoulder, Steven turned up from the phone to look at him. 

Myers sighed: He will be found.

“I guess it is time to get my hands dirty,” Steven gave him a weak smile in return. A grimace deepened upon his father’s face, the man gave him a couple solid pats on the shoulder, the closest Myers tends to get to an actual hug. Steven didn’t even need to ask, his father didn’t want this for him, but wasn’t going to argue with the fates about it. It is what it is. They had to adapt.

***

“Hello?”

“Steph and Noah are in trouble,” Steven started even before Steve could finish the word.

Steve startled, drawing the attention of the others at the booth. “What do you mean?”

“Steph was attacked while I was talking to her,” Steven explained. 

“Attacked?!” Steve’s voice raised, a mix of panic and uncertainty strangling him. “Are you--”

“They took Noah,” he continued. 

“Took Noah?!”

The others around the table started getting restless. Saying “What’s going on?!” “Attacked?” “Who’s been attacked?!” “Who’s got Noah?” Steve waved his hand to get them to settle down, but Jennifer was already grabbing her wallet to throw money down on the table and Brian and Roy were putting on their jackets.

“She said a nurse came in to take Noah, but there was a struggle on the other end of the line and now she hasn’t been responding.”

“We’ll go check on her,” Steve assured him. “It must be some kind of misunderstanding.”

“The Runic Cults, they have spies in the prisons-- the asylums-- the hospitals-- They must have found out about Noah when Steph turned in the certificate.”

“I sure as Hell hope you are wrong.”

“I hope I am wrong too.”

***

Stephanie’s room was empty. She was gone, the baby was gone. All their things, all of her things: the cards, flowers, balloons… all gone. The bed was stripped bare, the chairs were arranged neatly against one wall, and there was a janitor’s cart parked outside the door. The room bore the sickening resemblance of post-death erriness. The absence of something that should be there but wasn’t there any longer. 

Jennifer caught one of the nurses by the arm, one she remembered checking in on Steph and Noah from before, “Do you know where the girl and the baby that was in this room went?”

The nurse, dispassionately, looked over Jennifer’s head into the room and shook her head: “Must have been discharged.”

“The baby is barely half-a-day old,” Jennifer held onto the nurse’s sleeve, keeping her from leaving. 

“I don’t know what to do for you, Ma’am,” the nurse drawled, trying to peel Jennifer’s fingers off her scrubs. “Talk to the front desk. To the registry office. Somebody else but me.” 

Jennifer roughly let go of the fabric, the nurse hustled down the hall and vanished into one of the side rooms. Jennifer sighed, rubbing her eyes with her thumb and index finger. She called over to her husband and both of them went to the front desk. Roy and Brian, meanwhile, were told to go to JFK to pick Steven up when the jet lands, it would bring him here an hour sooner than waiting for the bus would have. Steven told them what gate he would be exiting and sent them a selfie so they would know what he was wearing to make it easier for them to spot him.

“I’m sorry, but there isn’t anybody under that name here,” the man behind the desk told them. 

“That’s impossible, we were here two hours ago. What’s the discharge date?” Steve persisted.

“You don’t understand what I am saying, Sir,” the man was putting on that faux kindness that only medical billing clerks and customer service reps can perfect. “Nobody under either of those names were in this hospital in the past two weeks.”

“What the Hell is going on around here?!” 

“You must have the wrong hospital,” the man offered.

“We aren’t at the wrong fucking hospital,” Jennifer cut in.

“Ma’am, I have no reason to lie to you. Please, we don’t want to call security.”

Jennifer’s nose wrinkled and she was about to give the man a piece of her mind, but Steve pulled her aside, putting a lid on the fire. “They’re not going to tell us. Steven was right. Something big is going on here.”

“They have our daughter and grandson, Steve,” Jennifer was fighting to hold back her anger. 

“We can’t do anything to them right now,” he didn’t think it was best to lie to her about what he was thinking. “We have nothing. No idea where they took them. And besides, we are unarmed, we can’t just go in swinging our fists.”

“I want to tear this place down to the ground.” 

“We don’t even know if they are still here,” Steve whispered holding her tighter to him. “We might not have any other choice but to wait for Steven to get here. He might know something we don’t.”

“What if he doesn't?”

“Honey, we’ve distanced ourselves from this shit for the past twenty five years, and even then we barely knew anything. He’s been eyeballs deep in it; he’s had people with experience in this stuff constantly around him. If he doesn’t know anything or can’t help us, Steph and Noah are screwed.”

“But we don’t know him. How can we put our trust in him?”

“If we didn’t trust Duke all of those years ago, you, me, and our baby girl would have been dead then,” he reminded her. “Sometimes we just have to trust strangers for help.”

***

Steven called Tom as soon as he finished talking to Steve to tell him what had happened. Tommy Doyle said he would be there as soon as he could. The earliest flight Tom was able to get was one to Philadelphia. He was going to rent a car and drive the rest of the way. He would be about three hours behind Steven upon arrival. The only time Steven had his phone off was during take off and landing, the rest of the flight he was glued to the device, messaging back and forth between the parties. By the time he landed in New York, he had already been awake for 15 hours, and he was too nervous to take a nap on the plane. 

Steven was two steps off the exit ramp when his name was called. He peered over the crowd and saw two men waving at him to come over. They must be Roy and Brian. The boys had a similar look to Steph, same eyes, same dark hair, though the younger of the two had a bit of red in his hair. They both were built similarly, thin and long limbed, and around 5ft 8in in height, Steven was still a head taller than they were.

“Hey,” Steven raised his hand to show that he saw them. He approached them and offered his hand to both of them, which they took in turn: “I guess you already know who I am.”

“I’m Roy,” the older of the two said. The red-head then chimed: “And I’m Brian.”

“Do you have any bags that need to be picked up?” Roy asked. Roy had to be around his own age, twenty-two or twenty-three. Steph was almost three years older than Steven, at twenty six years old. Steven placed Brian at just out of highschool, not even at drinking age yet.

Steven jostled the backpack over his shoulder: “Just this.”

“Good: If we hurry we can take a shuttle to the parking lot.”

They were in too much of a hurry to say anything to each other. It wasn’t until they got to the car when Steven got his first surprise. He reached over to open the door when a little brown, noisy body slammed into the glass. The chiwawa growled and snapped at Steven through the glass of the Toyota.

“Oh… you brought Peanut….” Steven scowled at the dog through the window.

“We’re taking care of him while Steph was in the hospital. We didn’t have time to take him back to the house so we kind of kept him with us,” Brian answered, popping the trunk so Steven could put his backpack in it.

“I’ve never seen him act this way before,” Roy remarked. 

“He’s normally a docile baby,” Steven let the sarcasm drip through his teeth. He pulled up the right sleeve of his hoodie and pointed at some discolored marks on his forearm. “He’s tried to use me as a chew toy before. It isn’t just him. Dogs don’t like me. It is my aura. They hate it.”

“I’ll sit in the back with him and hold him still,” Brian offered.

“Thanks. I’m sorry about that,” Steven smiled, even if it was a thin one, and moved around to the shotgun seat. 

“No prob, man,” Brian gave him a thumbs up. He opened the door, caught the dog before he could escape, and climbed into the back. 

They spent a half hour in heavy traffic, listening to the high pitched growling of Peanut. It wasn’t until they were on the interstate and moving at quite a clip before any conversation started. Roy was the first person to say something.

“You know, the way Steph talked about you, I was expecting some kind of poindexter. But you look like you can break someone in half.”

“Everybody in high school thought I was going to play pro-football,” Steven made a little snorting laugh. “When I was applying for colleges, I got all the basic ones you’d expect wanting me to join their team. Notre Dame, Penn-State, New York. Both the Carolinas...”

“Why didn’t you?” Brian asked.

“I want to spend my life stopping things like this from happening to other people.”

“No shit,” Roy said. “Have you been through anything like this before?”

“Other than when I was a baby, not really,” Steve picked at the seams of his pants. “My fathers are the ones that know what they are doing. I mean, I know a few things. Most of what I’ve done so far was place wards and incantations on things, and get in a brawl or few. There was always someone else giving the orders.”

“... And, what do they have to say about what’s going on? I mean, didn’t you at least ask them?” 

Steven let out a long breath and leaned his head over the headrest of the car. Peanut growled at him ominously, or at least tried to for a tiny dog, “We’re basically going to have to track them through magic. The cults won’t have a paper trail. Nor will they be walking out in the open with either of them.”

“What can you do?” wondered Brian, holding the dog’s head back with one of his hands. 

Steven gave a half shrug, “Most of what I can do involves sensing energies and reshaping them. Energy has a natural flow, it can’t be bent into something it doesn’t want to be. So like, you can’t turn water into fire or pluck an apple out of thin air. But, you can tell that water to flow a little faster, for that fire to burn hotter, and that apple to grow sweeter.”

“Can anybody learn to do stuff like that?”

“There is only so much any given person can learn to do. Some people are born with a closer affinity to it and can do more than others. My family was singled out by the Runic Cults because of our natural abilities. And your family might be able to do a great deal more than you are aware of.”

“You think so?” said Brian.

“I mean, maybe,” Steven thought on it a bit: “Well, probably more than likely… Like, any joe-blow on the street can pick up a magic book, give the proper offerings and sacrifices, and speak the words of power-- but to actually cast a spell-- and such a powerful one as to create a gollum from a human, you would have to have an innate affinity for the stuff.”

“That was our great-great grandma that did that and she killed a lot of people in the process,” said Roy. 

Steven cocked his head to the side, “Something that powerful would need a lot of gathered energy. I haven’t read the spells to know the specific nature of them, but I would think it would involve taking the essence of those victims, their energy, and find some way to transfer that into the vessel body: increasing its strength.”

“He was eventually killed and would have stayed dead, but some guy named Tommy Jarvis stuck a lightning rod into him and quote-unquote, accidently, reanimated him.”

“He was then blown to smithereens by the government, but went all Invasion of the Body Snatchers with our grandma’s dead body,” Brian added. 

“And now he’s frozen in some remote backwoods superjail,” Steven finished the story. He gave a small hum and rubbed a finger along his chin. “The government looks like it has its hands in some pretty dark shit.”

“Why’d you say that?” asked Roy.

“They basically own your uncle and my father,” he explained. “The doctors and judges that put and kept my father in Smith’s Grove were part of the same Cult that placed the curse upon my family.” 

Steven then gave a long thin smile and shook his head: “When my father escaped from their control and turned on the Cults for what they had done: the government was pretty quick to bury what had happened to keep it from the public.”

“And you?” said Roy.

“I don’t doubt they are watching me and what I am doing,” he leaned back into the seat. Peanut snapped at him to get him to sit back up “Shit, jerk-ass dog.”

Brian shushed the dog and held it back, “Be nice.”

Steven sucked on the nip the dog gave him on his hand and shook it. “Yeah. The Cult of Thorn isn’t the only Runic Cult. There are about twenty of them, each of them performing a different function to the whole.”

“That’s some Illuminati sounding shit to me,” Roy chuckled, but it was a strained one.

“The Thirteen Families, The Illuminati, The Clover-Shamrock organization, The Runic Cults,” Steven named a few of the big names. He shook his head, tired: “They are a Venn Diagram of Secret Organizations. Some of the most powerful people in the world are only in one, some people are in two, some are in three or more. Normal people like to think that all our Politicians are in them, but they are just figure heads. It is really the people who put the money in their pockets and are blackmailing the politicians. They like to let us think we have some autonomy, letting buffoons get elected into powerful positions, the buffoons they chose for us, and then tell us ‘That’s what y’all picked. Ain’t ya happy about that? That’s your freedom at work!’” Steven had changed into a Southern-US accent in a mocking way, but he went back to his normal voice to finish: “Then when we are deep enough in the shit, after the nuclear wars, global warming, and mass die off: they’ll buy the planet wholesale, people and all, and rebuild it how they want it.”

“Dude, that’s dark,” Brian recoiled. 

“When the inevitable heat-death of the universe comes, it all wouldn’t matter anyways,” Roy added.

“Oh, don’t you start too,” Brian kicked the back of the seat. 

“Which one of these organizations do you think has our sister and your son then?” Roy asked.

“Hard to say. The Runic Cults alone have about 100 members at most in each branch, thirty tends to be the average. They also tend to share minions and many of those don’t know who they are working for. So even if we shake down the doctors and nurses that took them, they wouldn’t be much use. Thorn lost most of their members by my father’s hands. He killed them during a mass when they were going to perform a ritual that required a high power pull-- so I am doubting it is that one, but a branch that is filling in the gaps.”

“Doing the math, there is only about a thousand people in this organization,” Roy said out loud. “But, you said that there was also overlap into other secret society types. We could be pissing off one of their bigger brothers if we hit the wrong people.”

“That’s the gist of the problem,” Steven agreed. “One part of the government under a certain society often finds itself at odds with the agenda of another.”

“Why didn’t they just kill all of you? If you don’t mind me asking. I would think it would’ve been easier on them.”

“They had already tried to kill us, but couldn’t get all of us. My father, me, and my son. We are all that is left of our bloodline. One group wants us to survive; they plan to find a use for us later. Another, doesn’t want their project running loose; they want us out of the way because we are a danger to them. So, they decided to just leave us alone and play damage control.”

“Until today,” said Roy.

“Until today,” Steve breathed. He rested his head against the window, watching the interstate zip by the car. Steven heaved in a heavy breath, fighting the sob that wanted to burst free. Talking helped keep the deep dread at bay, though now that was out of his system he was back to the raw core problem. His son and his lover were gone and they need to be found, and he didn’t want to think of them as dead. Steph and Noah undergoing what had happened to his mother Jamie and himself, and his mother didn’t survive and he wouldn’t have without help. His heart ached and his throat tightened. In his mind, he wondered if his presence, or even his father’s presence, would have kept them away or if they would have still came for Noah and Steph regardless. “They… saw an opening. We weren’t…. I wasn’t…. there to protect them, to keep them away….”

“They could’ve killed you or took you with them, you know,” Brian pointed out. “I get ya that it massively sucks, what my sister did by not telling you. Maybe you could’ve done something to keep them away, maybe not. We fucked up, all of us. We couldn’t stop what happened, now we just have to fix it.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Steven managed to say, yet he didn’t quite wholly believe. He didn’t want to argue anymore. He did tell Steve and Jennifer that they would be in danger, but they didn’t know what would have happened. He wished he had known and had time to prepare. There would’ve been wards and protection spells in place, Noah and Steph wouldn’t have been left alone… Something else--Anything else!-- could have been done. He had failed at preventing Steph from getting pregnant, then Steph chose not to tell him, and now they’ve all failed at protecting her and the child.

***

Jennifer was at the hotel waiting for the boys to come back. Steve had volunteered himself to stay at the hospital and stake it out by himself after Jenny had exploded at another nurse. She had spent the time trying to call Steph’s phone, but it was no longer available and went right to voicemail. She saw Roy’s car pull into the parking lot through the window and went down to the parking lot to greet them. Roy and Brian, carrying Steph’s dog Peanut, exited the car first. She could make out the man-shaped lump curled up in the passenger side, black hoodie pulled up over his head. 

“What happened to him?”

“He’s fine,” Brian told her. “He tired himself out.”

Jenny approached the vehicle and knocked on the window. Steven didn’t move, so she slapped her palm against the door panel. He started awake with a yelp. He looked up at her, his steel-blue eyes red and face puffy from exhaustion. He reached about and took off the seatbelt. 

“It’s good to see you’ve made it here in--” she paused. He had climbed out of the car and stood, towering over her. He had to be a few inches taller than 6-ft, a head taller than her husband and her sons. She turned her head up to look at him. “Well, they aren’t going to miss you in a crowd.”

Steven held his hand out to her, “You must be Steph’s mom, Jennifer.”

“You can call me ‘Jenny’ if you’d like,” Jenny took his hand. He had a firm grip, but didn’t shake longer than what was business appropriate. “You know, you’re not quite what I was expecting, Steven.”

“Your boys said just as much,” he would have a nice smile if he wasn’t trying to be humble. She could see what got her daughter’s attention, this disarming charm that was rather natural for him. 

“More Steve Rogers than Norman Bates,” Brian joked.

“Not the best example there, bud,” Steven had put his hands into the pockets of the hoodie. He had broad, toned shoulders; Jenny observed. He either was an athlete or was one in highschool and had been keeping it up. He wasn’t the type of person Steph would have dated in highschool. She was in the drama club, she played the violin, and went to STEM camp instead of summer camp. The type of boys she brought home were artists and intellectuals, people that were attached to the internet or face-first into a book more than a football and free-weights. 

“Steph said you’re studying to be a doctor?” Jenny asked. 

“A historian, of sorts. Mainly in the theology of pre-Christian European cultures,” he answered. “That’s where I met Steph, since she was working in the Archaeology Department at the Field Museum. I had to write a few thesis papers for class and she was their intern and lowest person on the totem pole, so the job fell on her.” 

“She said you’re going to Dublin next year and staying until finish your studies.”

“That’s debatable right now,” his shoes were more interesting than her face when he said this. 

“Steph wouldn’t want you to give up your dreams, Steven,” Jenny attempted to assure him.

“And I don’t want her to give up her own,” he gave that small, sad smile again. Steven turned his head up into a vague direction, “She wanted to come back here, this is her home. She worked very hard to be here. And I’m going to work very hard to bring her and Noah back.”

Steven had turned to her, his handsome face taking on a stoney seriousness. It was something in his eyes, the way they looked through her, like he was peering into her soul. There was a presence about him, something she couldn’t see or touch, it told her to beware, yet not to be afraid. He straightened up, satisfied with some kind of conclusion.

“There is power in your blood,” he said to her. “Far more than what I could sense off of Roy and Brian.”

“The women in our family, they carry it,” she answered.

“Using magic is often like opening a can of soda, or a Pandora’s Box. Once it is opened, it can’t be resealed. Like you do. But I’ve never sensed something like it from Steph.”

“I had to banish my uncle with my own hands. I was the only one that could do it,” she remembered the bulky deer-antler hunting knife in her hand and seeing Jason Voorhees being dragged down into the ground. “I didn’t tell Steph anything about it. She had never needed to use magic.”

Steven nodded, “And so she was never taught.”

“You were probably the first person she knew that could use magic,” Jennifer said. “Otherwise, she knew that it existed in some form or another.”

“Are you willing to learn some more today?” Steven asked.

“If it would help save my daughter and grandson.”

Steven nodded to her, “Then we’d better get moving. We’ve got a busy night ahead of us.”

***

They had to stop by Stephanie’s apartment before they could go to the hospital. Brian and Roy went ahead of them, but Jennifer took Steven with her. Steven said they had to get a few things that belong to Steph, something personal she had been in contact with in the past week. Jennifer told him that the hospital took all of their stuff from the room, including Steph’s items, and got rid of them. Steph’s apartment was near the university campus, two bedroom, one bath, open living room and kitchen, and probably costing her a fortune. The smaller of the two rooms was set up to be a nursery for Noah, everything still in its place, unused. Steph’s room was across the hall and adjacent to that was the bathroom. Steven took her hairbrush and her toothbrush from the bathroom, then went into her bedroom. He picked up some of her jewelry, at least the ones he could remember she wore often, and a few of her dirty socks that were wadded up by her bed. 

“What are you going to do with all of that?” Jenny asked.

Steven tossed in her hairbrush, “We are going to be doing a bit of dowsing.”

“Like what you do for water?” She fumbled at catching the brush, but recovered before it fell to the floor. 

“But for Steph,” he unrolled one of the socks and dropped the jewelry inside of before rolling it back up. 

“With her socks and hairbrush?”

“Things she used everyday. They are often more personal than things people attribute emotional value to,” he answered. “My father could get a trail through a photograph of that person. I’m not quite as good, but these things still work.”

“A photograph?” Jennifer balked.

“It is a part of your past. Many cultures still believe that photographs steal a piece of your soul. But it is more like making a record of your shadow,” he explained. “Photography uses light, you see. It captures what is reflected to make that image. It doesn’t work so well with digital images, though. It lacks that natural analog feel that film had.” 

Jennifer sighed, assured that she didn’t have to destroy every computer and smartphone attached to the internet. She suddenly jerked her head up, remembering something. “I have a polaroid of Noah and Steph.”

“On you?”

“Yep,” Jenny reached into her purse and pulled out a little booklet. She flipped through clear plastic sleeves of the album and removed a 3-and-a-half inch Polaroid, and handed to him. She even had the camera in her purse too: hurray for modern retro trends. The photo was of Steph dressed blue hospital gown that was askew on her bare shoulders. She held Noah up towards the camera, he was mid-yawn. Jenny pointed to the picture as he admired it: “She just finished feeding him, he was so tuckered out.”

Steven wore that sad smile that she was becoming accustomed to seeing on him. He handed the picture back to her.

“You can keep it,” she said.

“Give it back to me later,” he compromised. “I have nowhere safe to put it right now.”

Jenny reluctantly plucked it from his fingers and inserted it back into the book, then slipped the book back into her purse. “We’d better get to the hospital.”

Steven spent most of the ride to the hospital on the phone with his adoptive father, Tom. Tom’s flight had just landed and he was in the process of getting a rental car. Steven told him that they would probably be at the hospital when he gets into town and should meet up with them there. Steven told Tom that he gave his car to Myers and he would be there sometime early tomorrow morning, hopefully they would have this solved before then and they wouldn’t need his help. 

Jennifer felt like a hand reached out and started squeezing her chest at the thought. She could hear that Tom wasn’t too thrilled about the news either. Steven had noticed her trepidation and assured her, that if things were better in a couple of days she wouldn’t even have to be in the same room as him. 

Once he was off the phone, the conversation went pretty much like the one Steven had with Roy and Brian earlier, Steven explaining things about the Runic Cults: what their motives where, what they had been doing, but he went into further detail about what they had done to his family. Jennifer remembered Steve saying something about Steven being a child of rape and incest, but it didn’t really sink in until Steven himself related the story to her. To her, everything sounded a lot like something you would say to someone to scare them off, but if she wasn’t currently living in this nightmare, she would’ve continued to think that. 

“Neither of them had a choice in what they… did… with the other,” Steven flexed as if he was about to get hit in the face with a rolled up newspaper. He turned his eyes down to study his lap and his hands upon them: “I’ve been worried about myself, and about having children, ever since I’ve learned. I haven’t gotten myself tested for anything--weird. I wasn’t planning on starting a family for another five years or more, I thought I still had time.”

Jennifer made a mental note to get Noah checked out for anything congenital, though she had a feeling that was already on Steven’s growing list of concerns. She mentally kicked herself for even thinking something like that. It wasn’t like such “parenting” hadn’t happened throughout human history, the majority of the time the children came out perfectly fine. It is when it happened across several generations with no variety or outside genetics coming into the pool that many of the more worrying problems start cropping up. The Pre-1910’s European royal families was one of the largest and more famously documented cases of incest over a long period of time, most of them came out alright, until you think too long that WWI was one large family feud and killed millions of people and toppled most of their dynasties. 

“What would’ve you done if Steph had told you then?” 

“She knew about my history by then, it didn’t stop her from not having Noah,” he gave a shrug. “I guess that is a good sign, that she wasn’t scared of what I was, just the situation I’m in the middle of.”

“What about some random girl? Like a one-night-stand showed up and told you?”

Steven thought for a moment: “It depends, I guess. Like, what kind of person she is and what she wants to do. I would want the kid tested, of course, to make sure it is mine. But, like, if she is just after some money or is trying to trap me, she’s not going to get very far with that.”

“Most girls aren’t trying to trap men,” Jennifer said with a sigh. “Lot of the time it is because they don’t know what to do. They never learned to be their own person. They are scared and want help, or they don’t want to be alone. They think if they have a baby it would mean they won’t have to be alone, that the baby and daddy would have to be there for them.”

“I don’t plan on abandoning Noah, and I don’t want to take him from Steph either: let’s get that clear. But if some random girl came up to me, tells me that they had my child or are going to have my child--I am going to first make sure what her plans for the child are-- is she wanting to keep it or not-- then if she does keep it: what does she do for a living, where does she live, can she support this child? -- If she can not take care of the child, then I will want to take custody of the child until she is capable to do so.”

“Courts side with the mom more than the dad, you know. You don’t seem that well off yourself, and you have a serial killer in your home,” she huffed. 

Steven paused to study her seriously, Jennifer tried not to look directly at him. “How much money has the government given your family in compensation for what your uncle did to your mom?”

The question caught her off guard. Money? She didn’t get any money. They paid to repair the town, for the multiple funerals, and for that “fancy” jail he was now in. But, she never got anything when it came to compensation for the grief of losing her mother, or to pay for the therapy bills. She could feel her face burning red, but in the calmest tone she could manage she asked: “Enough... What about you…?”

Jennifer knew that he could tell she was lying, it showed in his eyes, she could feel it in his aura. Steven leaned back into the seat: “Fifty-Million.”

Jennifer gagged on her own spit and managed to cough out: “Fucking fifty-million dollars?!”

“They really didn’t give you anything?” Steven asked instead.

“NO,” Jenny said through her gritted teeth: “Was that money a total for everybody?”

“No, most of it is mine. That total is much, much higher,” he said way more calmly than she was. “It is ‘shut-up’ money for the fact that the Cults were employed by the government to do what they’ve done to us in the first place. We don’t really use it though, we live off the interest. I didn’t even know I had inherited that money until I was eighteen. It is paying for my education and I don’t have to pay rent on my apartment because I own it.”

“Does… Steph know about--”

“I didn’t tell her that much,” Steven shook his head. He was annoyed now: “Did they seriously not do anything for you guys?”

“They made a jail and compensated the insurance companies,” she pursed her lips. “Jason killed cops. He killed FBI agents. They didn’t capture him to protect us, they blamed us for him in the first place. They stopped him because it was in their own self interests.”

Steven frowned, a cold look that didn’t suit him at all. He was just as offended as she was, and he wasn’t the one that got screwed. “Are you guys doing alright though? I mean, I plan on helping Steph and Noah out, but what about you?”

“I don’t need any money,” she sighed. Jennifer wasn’t about to take a pity hand-out from him, even if it was government-given money and--- NO. She mentally kicked herself, she wasn’t about to justify any excuse. It was going to Noah anyways. 

“Other than financially,” he then asked.

“A few nightmares still, but I’m alright,” she weakly smiled. “I’m still here, so that counts.”

Steven turned to the window, going quiet. He rested an elbow on the lip and his head on his fist, watching nothing. She had touched on something, it wasn’t the same pain as the constant dread of Steph and Noah being gone, this was a much older one. He had probably sensed that she was about to say something and he spoke up first.

“My mom Jamie was fifteen when she died,” he said. “She would’ve been 38 or 39 right now. I mean, I am thankful every day that I was adopted and given a chance for a normal life. But, I wasn’t aware of her sacrifice for many years, and I wish I had known her. She died so I could be here right now. Steph… she’s lucky to have you, that you weren’t taken away from her. You were able to stop your uncle, to protect your daughter, and to watch her grow up and have children of her own. All the money in the world wouldn’t be enough to replace what was lost.”

Jennifer brushed away the wetness from her eyes. She hadn’t wanted to think about it, even though she was aware of it. Stephanie was going through what she had gone through, what this boy Steven’s mom had gone through. Jennifer had survived, Jamie did not. Steph grew up knowing her mother and father. Steven had to be taken in by strangers, strangers that still loved him and had to lie to him to protect him. 

Steve and the boys were waiting in the parking lot when they pulled up. Jennifer parked next to Roy’s car and rolled down the windows. Steve leaned into the vehicle to talk to them.

“How’d you suppose we go about this?” Steve didn’t even introduce himself, Steven didn’t appear to notice nor care about the lack of formalities. 

“We first have to figure out if they are there or not,” Steven opened up a white grocery sack with the words “Thank you!” written in blocky red letters on them. He pulled out the ball he made with Steph’s socks and the hairbrush.

“What’s all that supposed to do?” 

Steven handed the hairbrush to Jennifer. “Watch carefully. Don’t try anything yet.”

“Do we need to get out of the car first?” she asked. 

“Not yet. I just need to know if she is close by first.”

“Ok.”

“What is he doing?” Steve leaned in to ask his wife.

“Dousing,” she said then hushed him. 

Steven twisted around the seat until he faced a northerly direction. He clasped the sock containing Steph’s favorite jewelry in his cupped hands. He leveled his hands to his face and breathed the words into them. Neither Jenny and Steve understood what he said, but could vaguely make out that it was an actual language, gaelic of some sort. Steven closed his hands and concentrated. 

Jennifer inched closer, she could almost feel the pull in her chest. Like a little prickle, a ghost of a suggestion for her to follow. It was distant… a whisper telling her that she had quite a way to go to scratch that itch. 

Steven raised his head and turned about. “She’s not in the hospital.”

“Are you sure?” Steve asked.

“He’s right,” Jenny thoughtfully answered. “A long way away…”

Steven pointed behind him to the south-west, “She’s that way somewhere. Maybe about fifty miles or so? The connection is very weak. Tentative.”

“Fifty miles, south-west? That’s pretty close to Philly,” Steve noticed. 

“It is?” a light flashed in Steven’s eye. “My dad Tom just landed in Philadelphia.”

“Tell him we’re heading his way. We’ll meet him in an hour.”

***

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Steven watched as they passed the green exit-sign on the interstate. 

Jennifer and Steve both turned and went “Hm?”

“There’s a Haddonfield in New Jersey, right next to Voorhees Township?”

Jennifer rolled her eyes but Steve gave a loud barking laugh: “Yep. I pointed that out to Jen earlier today.”

“I didn’t think it was very funny,” she groused. 

“Is there any relation to your step-grandfather’s family?”

“Probably,” she answered. “It was named after a Voorhees that was also our state governor. The Voorhees my popcycle of an uncle are related to had an estate around this area. It went to hell before grandmother died, she couldn’t afford to take care of it. What I understand is that she used up all of her late husband’s money to bring Jason back. My mom had to work as a waitress, among other things.”

“What happened to the estate and the grounds?”

“The township had the home leveled in the late-90s. The lot then was auctioned off to a bank and a subdivision was built on the property. There’s now like twenty McHomes on the land.”

“How far away is the superjail?” 

Jennifer thought for a moment, taking in a slow breath, “East of here. Twenty miles or so.”

Steven turned east and studied the horizon. “Steph’s not that way. She’s much closer, about 10 miles south-west now.” 

“How does this spell you are doing work anyways?” Mr. Freeman asked, looking at Steven through the rearview mirror.

“Reconnecting parts of a whole,” he said. “Everybody has an aura, an energy source unique to themselves. Think like DNA but with your essence. Things you touch on a regular basis, parts of yourself you discard, they have a trace of that aura within, an imprint. When that is activated by a bit of magic, it calls out to the source wanting to reconnect with it. It basically reaches out for it, so like the strand of yarn through a labyrinth: you follow it.”

“Socks though?”

“It would’ve been rude to use her underwear. Far less creepy with socks,” he sneered.

“Watch it--she’s still my daughter.”

“Baby daddy,” Steven pointed to himself. 

“Hey now, both of you. She has room in her life for more than one Steve. You don’t have to go Highlander on each other,” Jennifer cut in. It was one of the things she admired about her husband, he rarely backed down from a fight, but he didn’t need to be picking a fight with Steven. Steve had more guts than brains sometimes, but Jenny would put hard-money on Steven if they were to start swinging. Steven didn’t strike her as the type to throw the first punch, but was the sort to retaliate with more than he was given-- one of those people that live by the code “I did not start this fight, but I will finish it.”

“Sorry, hon,” Steve apologised. 

“Sorry. That was out-of-line,” Steven turned his eyes down. 

“None of us are thinking clearly. I don’t think any of us slept more than a couple hours in the past two days. We’re all living on coffee and energy drinks,” Jennifer pointed out. 

They sat in silence for the next ten minutes, until Steven suddenly jerked his head up and to the side. He told Steve to pull over, Steph’s presence was now north of them. Steve drove into a gas station and parked. 

Steven got out of the car, went to the end of the parking lot and pointed west of them: “What’s out that way?”

“Woods and farms, mostly,” Jennifer answered. “Large town houses and vacation homes. We aren’t that far from the Pennsylvania state line.”

Steven took out his phone and opened up Google Maps. It showed his current location. He copied and pasted it into a message to Tom: (How far away are you from here?)

It was about five minutes before a response came: (~20min)

“We’ll wait here for my dad Tom to catch up. He ain’t that far away.”

Roy and Brian pulled into the gas station behind them and the four of them got themselves something to eat and refueled their vehicles. Steven picked up a few extra things to add to their stash: lighter fluid, a few bottles of cheap vodka, a couple novelty t-shirts..

“You think we’ll need to make some extra spicy cocktails?” Mr. Freeman leaned in and whispered to him.

“We’re going to have to go someplace that sells sporting goods,” he whispered back. “And hardware. Maybe a Walmart. Buy some hunting knives, nylon line, and tools, weapon type stuff. We might have to do some B&E.”

“Ah, one of my favorite past time activities,” Steve roughly patted the younger man’s shoulder. “Sounds like you’re going for a jack-of-all-trades approach since we don’t know where the location is or what the site looks like. A little bit of everything.”

“It’s not like I could’ve flown here with some of that stuff; the TSA would’ve had a fit,” Steven grumbled too morosely. “I had to leave my favorite aluminum baseball bat back home. I named her Betty.”

“It wouldn’t happen to be wrapped in barbed wire would it?” 

“No, but thanks for reminding me: I should get a leather jacket.”

Steve shook his head and walked back outside to wait by the car. The kid could give a good return jab, he admitted. Steven still felt a bit too much like snake oil to him though. It was a similar feeling he got from Duke when they both were in jail. There are a few extra things that made Steven feel more ‘off’ than Duke. The connections with the Cult and a murderer aren’t helping. Add on top of that the more mundane feelings most fathers feel when their little girls grow up and find partners: a sense of loss. It absolutely didn’t help that Stephanie and Noah were currently in danger, how mortal of danger they were in had yet to be determined. 

***

Awareness slowly returned to her, Stephanie recalled being in a fight, recalled seeing her baby being taken from her. She forced her eyes to open, but it was like trying to wrinch open a door that’s been rusted shut. She couldn’t focus on what was around her. It was a room, yes. She was in a bed. The bed was large. The covers were downy and thick. Silk. She realized she had no clothes on, save for an adult diaper. She wrapped her arms around herself. Her stomach was still distended but looked less like the basketball it was… yesterday? Two nights ago? A few nights ago? Her breasts ached, they were full of milk and her baby wasn’t there to feed. 

Steph took the silk sheet off the bed and wrapped it around herself. There was an oriental rug on the floor beside the bed. Plush, her toes sinking in the weave as she put her weight onto it. There was a light fixture built into the wall beside the bed. She turned it on. Faces appeared in the darkness, she startled at their blank eyes, until she realized they were painted portraits hanging on the walls, many of them in colonial and Victorian garb. Most of them were of men, a couple had a woman beside them, none of them were of children. The room had to be about 20 ft wide by 40 ft long. There was a seating area beside the shuttered windows and a fireplace made of river rock on the far end of the room. The room was sparse otherwise. She shuffled her way to an armoire near the bed to look for anything to wear, or for anything that would help her get out of here. 

There were no hangers, even though the armoire was the kind built to hang up clothes within. Everything was folded neatly in a stack on the baseboard. Someone thought of taking the hangers out of the room. She toppled the stack of clothes onto the floor. Dresses, vintage mid-century dresses. Nothing fancy, but work wear, much like a waitress or factory garb from around the 40’s and 50’s. She held one up, it was a gray-blue and buttoned from neck to hem across the front. She put it on, there was a tie sewn into the back to cinch the waist, even if she wouldn’t strike a very good hourglass figure at this time. It was made for someone taller than her petite five-foot-three frame, baggy on the shoulders, long in the skirt, but her fuller body filled out much of the extra fabric. It would’ve looked better on her if she had a bra on, but her nipples were so sore right now she wouldn’t be able to wear one for very long without wanting to murder someone.

A baby cry. Was it Noah? It started out as distant but was rapidly getting closer. Steph snapped her head up and tried to pinpoint it. It was now in the hall outside her door, she could hear the footsteps and knew they were there before the knock on the door came. It was a courtesy the knock-ie didn’t have to do, but did anyways.

“Miss Freeman. We are coming in,” a woman’s voice addressed her. “We are bringing you your son. We are only staff.”

Steph heard the key in the door lock, more than once. The door itself was solid wood, old, the frame as sturdy. The dead bolts now undone, the tongue and handle door latch clicked, and the door was pushed open. The first to enter was an older woman, not the nurse that took Noah from her. She had to be about seventy, dark skin, middle-eastern, black loose clothes, a blue and green hijab covering her hair and shoulders. She wasn’t alone, there was a man behind her holding Noah. He was around forty, dark in appearance as well, dressed in white cotton garb, both of them were barefoot. The woman took the crying baby from the man’s arms.

“Come, take your child and feed it,” the woman was rather straightforward with the statement. Steph approached like a starving animal would towards food being guarded by a predator larger than she was. She wrapped her arms around Noah and fled backwards from the two of them. The man had gone back into the hall and returned with a tray of food, which he placed on the table across the room. 

Steph kissed and pressed her face against the crying baby, she wanted to cry too: her baby was with her and neither of them were dead. She raised her face from the baby in her arms: “Where are we? Why have we been brought here?”

The questions were answered by the closing and locking of the door. Steph glared at the back of the door. Noah fussed and cried in her arms. She settled into one of the chairs to feed her baby, her son she was so close to not being able to hold again. She wondered how long they have been here. It hasn’t been days, she suspected, unless they had been feeding him formula or milking her like an unconscious cow. She rankled at the thought. 

Steph leaned in to examine the tray of food that was set upon the table. Hot tea and cookies, a glass of milk, two peeled hard-boiled eggs, two pieces of turkey sausage, sliced peaches, and a banana. The tea was served in an old porcelain tea set, white with blue figurines of women doing domestic farm chores: churning butter, fetching water, feeding the chickens. The cup had a floral pattern that matched the style the border was on the tea pot. The tray looked like real silver, tarnished with time. There was no silverware. She popped one of the eggs into her mouth whole and chewed on it. She picked up the plate and examined it, it was porcelain china like the tea set. All-together, it didn’t look like the set you would place to impress, but for the daily use of the house staff. 

Steph covered Noah with the blanket he was swaddled in and broke the plate on the table’s edge. It didn’t break the first two times she hit it, it was a common misconception due to sugar glass being used in media that plates and glassware are so fragile. She picked up a shard that was about 4 inches long, something she could use as a knife.

“I hope you are quite done making a mess for Tasja to clean up,” it was a man, age heavy in their voice. He wasn’t in the room, he was on a flat screen tv that had been hidden in the dark shadows of the room. The man was thin, his alabaster skin hanging off his bones, his hair dandelion fluff and bleak white, his teeth false. He had to be over 80 years old, maybe even over 90. He had on a sweater vest, red, and a white collar shirt under it. The background of the room he was in wasn’t too much unlike the one she was in: rustic and old. 

“Why’d you bring us here?” She demanded. 

“To the point,” his wrinkled lips pulled into a smile. “My name is Ulysses James Voorhees. Younger brother to Gregory Edward Voorhees, the man your great-grandmother Pamela married and father to your unfortunate uncle Jason. You and your son are currently at one of our estates. Not too far from where we rescued you.” 

“Rescued?” she gave a large snort.

“Yes. Rescued.”

“Were you the ones that took us from the hospital?”

“Yes--”

“Then you aren’t rescuing me! You’ve kidnapped me and my son!”

“Think of it like putting our valuables in a safe for protection, Miss Freeman.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” 

“We’ve been watching you your whole life: not just you, your mother and grandmother as well. Ever since the late Pamela had married into our family, she had given everything she owned into our care: including her children,” he said. “We’ve allowed your family to live relatively normal and unencumbered lives. We rarely got involved.”

“Why get involved now? Why me and my son?”

“Technically, we only have a say over what happens to you. Your son is in a legal gray area,” he showed his false teeth in a snarl. “Not by any law on the book, but between the Covens.”

“The Cult of Thorn?”

“The boy’s father and grandfather are all that remain of that sect,” he told her. “But there are others in that greater umbrella organization and they have a claim on all of Thorn’s past work. They believe that your baby is their property.”

“He is mine, he isn’t any cult’s property, and he’s not yours either!” she held her son closer.

“Not quite. Our family is the property of the Order Of the Dead, the females in the family especially, because they are the ones that wield the power. So you, Miss Freeman, aren’t as free as you may believe.”

“Who the fuck are the Order of the Dead?” 

“The worshipers of the Necronomicon, the book of the dead. An ancient religion leading all the way back to the bread-basket of civilization.” 

Stephanie pursed her lips, “So… what you are saying is that you want me, and the Cults want my son?”

“We would like to keep both of you,” Mr. Voorhees said. “We would like to evoke eminent domain, and in order to do that we had to get to you and your son first in our possession. We had to do it in a hurry, we couldn’t just send a letter in the mail. They were coming as soon as you had filed the paperwork on the child, naming the pure-blood as the father.”

It took Stephanie a moment to puzzle out why Steven had been called “the pure-blood,” and remembered being told that he was meant to be a sacrifice. The entire reason he was conceived and born was to be killed upon an alter. And those same people want Noah. 

“Steven’s going to be coming for us,” she hissed.

“He would likely be here before the end of the night,” Mr. Voorhees calmly informed her. “He’s with your parents, not too far away from here. He won’t be allowed to leave once he enters here.”

“You’re going to kill him?”

“Heavens no!” the old man had a cackling laugh. “The Runic Cults would demand recompense. It would make them more interested in taking your son. No, no. When the Cults come to bargain for your baby, we would have him as extra leverage. We will turn him back over to the Cults if they let us keep the child.”

“What are you going to do about Myers when he comes after Steven and Noah?”

“It’ll be another day before that happens. By sunrise your rescuers would be in our custody, the representatives of the cults would be here for lunch, and then we would be on a plane to Europe before sundown.”

“You’re obviously not wanting to save us from them out of the kindness of your heart: Why then?”

“We need a male heir.”

“I have two brothers--”

“They wouldn’t do. The men no longer carry any power in our family. We had tried to breed true before, the child came out deformed.”

“Jason?”

“My older brother died for that shame,” the old man snapped. “Pamela was a distant cousin of ours, from a branch that had broken off the tree decades ago. He promised that woman wealth and influence if she were to give him a viable male heir. When she could not, my brother was removed from his position as patriarch and he killed himself.” 

“Where does all of this Order of the Dead stuff come in then?”

“When that freak had drowned in a lake as a boy, the witch came to us for help. My brothers, sisters, and myself turned her away in turn, but somehow her requests made it to the ears of our superiors. They extended their hand to her. They told her they would bring back her son, but instead they had created a demonic monster for themselves and told her their efforts had failed.”

“So you just want us to breed us?”

“You, not so much,” he waggled a finger at her through the television. “You are no more special than your mothers before you. However, by a complete fluke of good fortune, you had managed to snag the crown jewels from one of our rivals. You must always give the best of your herd when you are sacrificing to the gods, and that family’s blood was meant to wash the feet of those gods. But their plans were spoiled, they missed their window, and now the Runic Cults must replenish their prized herd before they could cull them again.”

“You’re just painting a bullseye on your family’s back, you know,” Steph retorted. “Aren’t you worried that when the cults start killing again--”

“Nobility works in other ways,” he waved her away. “My father was the last man in our family to have an affinity for magic. The Order of the Dead gave us 100-years passed his death for a new heir to be born and to take his post among their ranks or they would withdraw their influence from our family. I am the last of his children alive, none of my sons, nor my brothers’ and sisters’ sons were born with the gift, but most of our daughters have been. It is no different among your branch. The Order will grant him sanctuary, and the Runic Cults won’t be able to touch your child or any children he were to have in the future.”

“Why won’t you just let your women take over the family?”

“Don’t think we hadn’t suggested that before,” he said. “My niece Geri is one of the strongest sorceresses among the Order. She is our current ambassador and high adviser to the Grand Priest, but that is all they would allow her to be. The other families, they are consuming what’s left our power one marriage, one birth, one boardroom deal at a time. We need a sire with power to consolidate it, to anchor us to the ground.” 

“Noah would be a slave to this Order,” she spat.

“A slave with lots of money, and if he chose to he could do nothing with his life but fuck, do drugs, and travel around the world. He could subsidise all the work to his cousins. He could also become a tyrant, a leader with an iron fist, and make people quell at his every word. Or, become a scholar, in love with his books and live a quiet life. This much will be up to him.”

“What about me?”

“You’ll be able to keep your job and raise him, but his education will be up to us. He will have tutors of both academic and metaphysical. “

“What if I have more children?”

“With the pure-blood, we advise not doing. The Cults may let one go, but no more. Find another partner.”

Stephanie turned from the TV screen. Noah was asleep on her breast, full and content. She brushed her finger along the side of his cheek. 

“There will be time to get use to it, Miss Freeman,” the old man concluded: “Try to find some happiness in the situation.”

The signal on the TV winked out and she could see it slide back down into the wall. She was watching an old dream wither away to nothing. A child’s dream where it was her and Steven living in a house by the Atlantic with Noah the oldest of three-or-four more children that look just like him. Having no other worries in life than where to go for summer vacation. Then she remembered what Steven wanted to do for a living, to put himself in danger, directly in the path of people like Mr. Voorhees, The Order of the Dead, and the Runic Cults. He was going to be captured and killed by one of them eventually. This safe life she dreamed of having was never a reality, she knew wasn’t possible when she chose to keep Noah a secret from him months ago.

***

Steve and Tom got along as if they were old friends from high school that hadn’t seen each other in 20 years. Steven was too young and too much of a rival to be much of a friend; he an other worldliness about him that Steve never could quite get past. Steve did stop trading hurtful barbs for joking around ones, which was easier now that Tom was here. He was an authority figure to Steven, and well-raised children, no matter their age, tended to act nicer around their parents. Tom was also closer to Steve’s pace, he knew things about what was going on and was able to tell them more on layman's terms.

It was about 10 pm when they exited the Walmart. They had spent an easy $600 on things that appeared more like camping equipment than weaponry. They got bottles of rubbing alcohol and emptied them out into mason jars, which they scored around the sides so they would burst upon impact. They were huddled around the trunks of their cars setting up each of their kits, making sure everybody had a knife, a line of rope, gloves, flashlight, batteries, matches, and lighters. Steve called dibs on the bolt-cutter and Roy and Brian took the bow-and-arrows. The two boys were placed on the lookout and camera take-out duty. Steve and Steven were on brawn duty, they both took a machete and a baseball bat, along with their hunting knives. Jennifer didn’t know very much spellwork, just enough to sense if there was something around, though she was getting better at the location spell, and Tom couldn’t handle complex spellwork. Steven would have to help them out if anything major needed solved. The only thing they had to do now was wait for Myers to show up in another five hours.

A cop car chirped its siren at them. Tom and Steve reflexively gave them pleasant smiles and a wave. There were four cop cars, one started to flash their red-and-blue lights. Steve leaned over to his wife: “Put your hands on your head and go talk to them.”

Jennifer barely finished a nod when one of the doors on the nearest cop car opened. Out stepped a dark shadow of a man, wide-brim black hat and long duster. Both Steven and Tom turned to the group and shouted: “Stay back!”

The man didn’t step out from behind the door, he did hold his own hands up to show he was unarmed. “We need to talk.”

“Not until you give back Steph and my son,” Steven shouted back.

The man in black lowered the hat on his head and placed it over his chest. The man wasn’t anybody they’ve encountered before. He was around the same age as Jennifer, Steve, and Tom, dressed in a charcoal colored business suit under the black jacket, and was a little pudgy around the midsection. “The Voorhees have him and the mother.”

“What sect are you?” Tom asked.

“Ash. The Cult of Ash,” the man answered, he lifted up the sleeve on his right arm to show them the rune: a vertical line with two smaller lines pointing down like a flag at low wind. 

“What do you mean that the Voorhees have them?” Jennifer called out. Brian and Roy had huddled around her to keep her between them.

The man acted as if he didn’t hear her: “They know you are coming. You will be walking into a trap if you go tonight.”

“What are you proposing?” Steve could tell there was a clause.

“We want to stop them as much as you do,” the man in back replied. “The Voorhees are wanting to initiate the boy into the Order of the Dead. Their clan had been on shaky ground with the Order for almost a hundred years, they need this child to pay their way into better standings.”

“But you claim my son as your property through me,” Steven came to stand at the forefront of the group, he held his hands out to show he was unarmed.

“I can’t lie to you, Steven; you’ve been told our ways, even if that dog can not speak,” the man in black had a gold tooth that showed as he gave a crooked smile, it glinted in the flashing lights. “The women in their family, the Voorhees, that is, are known to be some of the more powerful sorceresses in the occult. But their men, the last of their sorcerers died almost a hundred years ago and since then the family had been picked apart. If they can’t secure an appropriate male heir in the next fifteen years, they will be removed from the Order. They will become breeding stock with no power of their own.”

“And you want them to lose power.”

“They are going to claim eminent domain because they got to them first,” he said. “And, because they knew you were coming, if they had gotten their hands on you, they would’ve used you as a bargaining chip. Give you back into our control, if we let them keep the son.”

“Would you have done that?”

The man in black ran his tongue across his teeth, “You aren’t as valuable as you believe you are.”

“Yeah, I’m a worthless piece of shit,” Steven sighed. “But what matters what the both of you think my life is worth. Am I more valuable to you than my son is to them?”

“That always depends on what you can do for us,” the smile dropped from the man’s face, his hands now holding onto the top of the car door. “You aren’t the only one we have investments in--”

“How many of my brothers and sisters do you have in your clutches anyways?” Steven asked.

Tom’s eyes went wide: “Brothers and sisters?”

“Aah, so that was among the secrets he had told you,” the man dipped his head aside.

“It was something I had to piece together for myself. He would only bring up parts and pieces of what happened, what was done to him,” Steven admitted. “He would say he didn’t know. Never a yes or no answer.”

The man’s smile went wide again: “Out of the dozens of attempts, only five survive today. Including yourself. Three girls, two boys. You are the oldest and the only one made naturally.”

“Then why are you even here if there are others you can exploit?”

“You are the Cult of Thorn,” he pointed to Steven. “Your order is being threatened by an outsider. A cancer you and your father may be, you are still part of the body.”

“What are you going to do to help us then?”

“We have an appointment, eleven-o’clock, for lunch with Ulysses Voorhees, the only surviving child of their former sorcerer. I wouldn’t have to be the only Man-in-Black there.”

“But that title isn’t mine,” Steven said. “It would be my father’s. He’s the eldest and patriarch. And, somewhere in Ohio, maybe even in Pittsburgh right about now. It’ll be another five hours before he’ll get here. I can’t agree on his behalf on this.”

“Then we have time,” The man returned his hat to his crown. He started to dip back into the car before he stood up again: “By the way-- you all look like shit. Get some sleep. I will send a representative to you in the morning. Try not to kill them. You will regret doing so.”

The man climbed back into the police car and closed the door. The lights on the car stopped flashing and the four rolled out of the Walmart parking lot in silence. The group exchanged tired glances, saying nothing. Jennifer avoided meeting Steven’s eyes as she slipped into the passenger seat. Steven got into Tom’s rental car instead. Steve, Tom, and Roy talked for a while until they could come to an agreement as to where they should get hotel rooms for the night. Steve didn’t need to ask how they would be found, not just by The Cult, but The Shape as well, not after witnessing how Steven was able to track down Steph. Tom shook hands with Steve and Roy before breaking up and getting in their own vehicles. 

*************************************************************************************************************

May 2.

Steve couldn’t stay asleep. He went outside onto the balcony to smoke a cigarette to calm his nerves. He hadn’t had one in a few weeks, he was in the middle of one of his several attempts to quit: it was not successful. He almost missed the shadow creep up the stairway. He strained his vision to see if he could catch another glimpse, to pick its shape out from the dark. He focused his hearing. There were no footsteps. The small hairs started to tingle on the back of his neck. He had to fight the instinct to jump off the rail when the form came into view. It was human, a man. The fire in his hand brought him back to awareness, Steve swore and dropped the burning stub of the cigarette. 

“Errr… Hi?” Steve waved his scalded hand to the stranger. The man turned his head slowly to the side to regard him with the deep indifference of insignificance. This man was older than he was by at least a decade. A few visible scars on his face, one in particular cut through his left eyebrow and continued down his cheek. He was scruffy-bearded; his salt and pepper hair balding, shaggy and unkempt, but cut short. His clothing, old jeans and a flannel shirt, were worn thin and covered in dark stains. By his eyes, height and build-- it had to be Steven’s infamous father Michael Myers. 

“I’m Stephanie’s dad…?” Steve tried to smile, it came out more like a snarl. 

This did earn him a second glance, this one more thoughtful and for a while longer than before. The older man turned back and away to approach a particular near by door, he knocked on that door with the palm of his hand. 

Tom was the one that opened the door. He swore and practically flew from the doorway to get away from the visitor. He let the man passed and exited the room in a hurry to occupy a spot by the balcony next to Steve. He took the moment to catch his breath.

“That is one creepy ass mother fucker,” Steve said around the new cigarette he was lighting. 

“It never gets any easier,” Tom hung his head over the railing. “He’ll always be the Boogeyman.”

“Boogeyman, hm,” Steve drawn in a long drag on the cigarette and held onto the smoke for a moment, slowly he breathed it back out. A smile half crawled onto his face: “Hey, didn’t they also call John Wick the Boogeyman?”

Tom snorted, “I appreciate the gallows humor. Though… they both are a one-man-army that leave only dead in their wake. But, Wick was avenging the death of a dog. Myers eats dogs.”

“Woah, seriously?” Steve gave a disgusted frown.

“You’ve seen how Peanut acts around Steven?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s worse with him,” Tom hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the room. “He just kills the dog. Dogs like German Shepherds and Doberman. Big ones. With his bare hands.”

“Ah. Peanut would be just an appetizer.”

Tom gave a low “heh” and a shrug. He leaned back onto the rail of the balcony. “I had tried to get a puppy when the kids were young. Dan was, I guess, twelve at the time. Steven wasn’t even in school yet. We took the boys to the animal shelter to pick one out.

“Unnnh,” Steve drawled, “I see.”

“Yep,” Tom cut the word rather short. “Even the ones we were told were nice dogs all growled and snapped, and if they didn’t: they hid in the corner of their cages. Dan was so heartbroken, he wanted a dog for so long. He tried to take it like a champ, but it was just one more thing he saw taken from him.”

“What ya do to make it up?”

“We got them a cat, Sassy. Cats don’t seem to mind whatever the fuck it is. It’s something in their nature.” Tom gave a sigh: “Sassy still wasn’t a dog and ended up more of Kara’s pet than Dan or Steven’s. And several years later, after Dan moved out, we got Steven a pet tortoise, Tilly. Steven and Alex kind of both take care of her.”

“Are you worried about the turtle becoming soup?” Steve nodded his head back to the room where Myers and Steven were. 

Tom shrugged, “Maybe. But I don’t think he’d do anything on purpose to make Steven that mad at him. I mean, he wouldn’t have come if he didn’t care at some level. But it’s like knowing Steven has a bear living in his house. Steven might say it is alright, and that bear might be attached to him, it doesn’t mean that bear won’t hurt him or someone else unintentionally.”

***

It took Steven a solid hour to relay everything that had happened. He told Myers about the encounter with the Man from Ash, what he had said, what he had revealed, and what he wanted. Myers took most of the news as he tends to do, stoically. Steven had got so well at explaining things to him in the past five years that few questions needed to be asked. Myers made one of his rare verbal responses, a simple “Huh.” when Steven brought up that Thorn was successful at siring other children. Myers told him that any would be younger than Steven, but by no more than a year or two. Thorn would have wanted to complete their ritual before they were born.

“Do you know anything about the Order of the Dead?”

Little. They come out of the Middle-East. Places like Egypt, Babylon, Arabia. Older than the Bible. Older than the Greeks.

“Older than the Runic Cults?”

Hard to say.

“The Romans and Christians destroying everything wouldn’t have helped. They could have been at each other's throats for the past Seven-Thousand years and we wouldn’t know about it.”

Myers turned his head to a shoulder, implying a shrug and a nod.

“What are we going to do with this representative when they come?”

They’ll send someone neutral, someone they can lose.

“Someone that wouldn’t know what is going on, perhaps…” Steven scratched at his lip in thought. “One of my siblings maybe?”

Myers didn’t respond, but Steven could see in his eyes the wheels turning in the back of his head. Steven laid back on the bed and rubbed his face. “Why can’t anything be easy?”

His father just patted him on the knee and stood up. Myers went into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. Steven heard the shower turn on about ten minutes later. He didn’t know when he fell asleep, but he eventually did among the thousand swirling thoughts that slowly blended into sleep. He didn’t hear the shower turn off nor when Myers dressed and occupied the other bed in the room. Tom already arranged to stay with Steve and Jennifer, he was only keeping company up until Myers came. Steven was glad to see that Tom got along with Steve and Jenny, it was one less thing for him to worry about. 

***

Nine-sharp. It was nine in the morning on the dot when the knock on the door woke both of them up. Myers sat straight up, but could hardly stay awake. Steven practically rolled off the bed and onto the floor. They had barely got four hours of sleep, the exhaustion was more of a dull ache all over the body. Who ever it was knocked again.

“Yeah…” Steven croaked, cleared his throat. “In a minute.”

Steven swaggered over to the door and pulled it open. It was a girl on the other side. Her eyes slowly grew wide as she took in the scene. Steven was in his boxer-briefs and a tank top, he suddenly felt too necked and exposed. Myers had the covers over the lower part of his body, but Steven could tell he had on a pair of cotton pants on under it--that was something at least. His father still didn’t have a shirt on and didn’t seem to even care, the runic spells and sigils tattooed upon his back and arms exposed along with all the scars he accumulated over the years. 

“You’re the representative?” Steven asked.

“I was called here,” she tentatively began. She was in his age-group, in her early 20’s. She wore a yellow crop-top with a black Batman logo on it, and acid-wash jeans with expensive holes in them. She was mixed race, at least half-white, if she was whom Steven was suspecting. The rest of her lineage was harder to guess, some black, maybe some Asian or Latin. She had freckles on her nose, cheeks, and shoulders, green eyes, and thick brown hair pulled back by a wrap. In her arms she carried three bundles, clothing still in thier in dry-clean packaging. She gave a nervous smile that showed off her straight teeth, a practiced smile. “I um… I am here to assist the Priest... to prepare him and his escorts.”

“What’s your name?” Steven asked. He had stepped aside to let her into the room.

“Name?” She jumped a bit at the question. “Julia.”

“Put the clothes on the bed there,” he said, pointing to his bed. She did so, but her eyes kept darting to Myers, as he tracked her movements.

“I am Steven. Steven Doyle,” Steven held his hand out to her once her arms were free. She shook his hand, loosely and mainly with her fingers. “This is Michael Myers. He’s the Priest of Thorn you were sent to aid.”

Julia whispered the name, “Michael Myers.”

“You know who he is, right?”

“I’ve heard of him,” she was offended by the question. Julia had stuffed her hands into the front pockets of her jeans. “I heard of you too. I just… never expected…” her face scrunched up and she frowned, “They didn’t tell me who I was helping.”

“A test, perhaps?”

“He’s not going to murder me is he?” She asked, pointing at Myers. He still hadn’t moved, but continued watching her.

“Only if you do something that warrants it,” Steven said. 

“Tell him to stop looking at me like that. It’s creepy.” 

“Think of him like an old stubborn barn cat. It makes the things he does easier to understand,” he said.

Myers turned his glare at Steven and said something with his hands that Julia wasn’t able to understand. She recognized it as ASL, but didn’t know it well enough. She only guessed some of the words. Like: Cat, Crazy, Tell.. or was it Speak? Same?

“What did he say?” she leaned over to ask Steven.

“He’s not deaf. Don’t try to talk around him,” Steven answered. 

“That’s not what he said,” Julia waved a hand at Myers. She turned to look at the old man: “That’s not what you said. What was it really?”

Steven told her: “I’m not a cat. You shouldn’t tease your sister like that, it’ll make her crazy.”

Julia snapped her head about to face Steven: “How did you know? We’ve never met before.” 

Myers said something else, Julia quickly looked between him and Steven.

“He says you resemble his younger sister.”

“I do?” she questioned.

“We had also guessed they would’ve sent one of you. Ash just told us about you and there needed to be a neutral party. Someone that we wouldn’t… mishandle.”

“Mishandle?!” she huffed. “You mean kill? ...What is he saying now?”

Steven frowned at whatever his father, their father, was telling them. Steven responded to him: “We’re not in a situation where you have to do anything like that.”

“What?”

Again, Steven didn’t tell her exactly what was said; “You won’t be harmed. But, if you turn your hand on us, you will not be treated with kindness.”

“I wasn’t sent here to listen to all of this ‘Blood is thicker than Water’ bullshit,” she said.

“The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb--” he corrected her.

“What?”

“Stick with whomever you know will have your back,” Steven said. 

Julia crossed her arms, shifting her weight to her right leg. 

“Look. Julia. Do you know why you are here? Why we are here and not in Illinois?”

“Something to do with negotiating with Order of the Dead and they need more than one Priest on hand,” she spoke each word as if she was making a stack of pancakes: flipping every single one of them.

“They are holding my son Noah and his mother hostage.”

Julia blinked, the color drained from her face. It took a moment before she composed herself: “They have no grounds to do that.”

“They believe they own his mother because her family made a deal with the Order decades, maybe centuries ago. Her grandmother was the mother of Jason Voorhees.”

Julia’s eyebrows crawled up her forehead: “Well, you’re fucked.”

“I didn’t know that at the time.”

“So, The Ash Priest is going to sneak… him,” she jerked her head towards Myers, “into the meeting and break them out?”

“We don’t know his plan, we thought that was what your job was meant to be.”

“Not really. I was told to get the attire to him and two others that’ll act as his acolytes,” her eyes drifted to Myers. “I have to make you look presentable.”

“Less like the murder-hobo he is,” Steven added.

Julia didn’t need a translator for the gesture he gave the two of them to know what it meant.

***

It was the first time that Steven ever seen his father dressed in an actual suit. It was likely the first time Michael, himself, had been in a suit as an adult. It wasn’t a fancy suit, it was business boardroom appropriate though: dark midnight blue with coal-colored buttons and accents, silver-gray silk necktie, black-brown leather shoes, and black shirt and socks. They had made the choice to cleanly shave off his beard and trim his hair down to an extremely short buzz cut-- they didn’t know what else they could’ve done on short notice without an actual barber there. He didn’t appear to like any of it though as he looked at himself in the tall mirror on the back of the bathroom door.

Myers scowled at Steven when he caught him sneaking another picture with the phone. 

“Hey, don’t be so dour,” Steven said, unable to hide the humorous smile across his face. “You don’t look half-bad like this.”

Myers rolled his eyes and turned away from him, only to find the other one on the other side. Julia held up the black duster for him. He watched her for a moment, she had that fake smile on her face again, hiding her nervousness. He took the coat from her and put it on himself.

“You two look even more alike cleaned up,” she said, mostly to Steven. Steven had a pair of khaki slacks and a fitted polo shirt on, what he was planning on wearing when he was going to meet Steve and Jennifer for the first time, back when he first packed his clothes and thought things weren’t going to go to shit. He didn’t have his hair in its normal spiked doo, but went with a swept-back side-part. Steven pulled off the trust-fund preppy-look rather well, Julia thought. 

“What about the others?” Steven asked back. “You’ve met them, right? Our sisters and brother?”

“They brought us together when most of us where 16, to introduce us to each other and tell us what we were and why we were born,” she said.

“How’d that go?”

“I don’t think any of us were happy about it at first,” she shrugged. “I mean, we all grew up in the system. Boarding schools, Orphanages, Foster homes-- that kind of thing. Then we get thrown in together, told we are related, then that we are related to…” she pointed to Myers with her eyes. 

“I get the feeling,” Steven had his hands in his pockets. “My adopted parents didn’t tell me either. I was 18 when I was told, and that was because dad made them do it or he would’ve done it himself.”

“So we knew before you did.”

“What were you told?”

“Your names, where you were, a bit of what happened to Thorn, and that they couldn’t get to you…” she gestured again to their father.

“I was being watched over.”

“Yeah.”

“What are the others like? I don’t even know their names.”

Julia cocked her puckered lips to the side.

“What?”

“Promise not to laugh?”

“I’ll try.”

Julia sighed: “Jessica, Josie, and Jacob.”

Steven’s eyebrows knitted together, his head twisted to the side. Myers jerked round and gave her a glare that read “What-the-fuck?” so loud that she could practically hear it. 

Steven straightened back out and gave a half-smile: “Julia, Jessica, Josie, Jacob--and Steven!”

Julia gave a loud exasperated groan. The Crystal Gems reference was almost as bad as a pun, but nothing can get as bad as puns. The reference did go over Myers’ head, and he went back to sulking angrily at the mirror. Julia handed Myers the wide-brimmed black hat, one that was more akin to a western hat than a fedora. 

“I’ll be outside. You two figure out who else is going to go in with him. I’d advise it not be you; they’ll be looking for you, ” Julia pointed to Steven. “Nor should it be the mom, she is one of them.”

“Right, I get it.” Steven bit off the words. He watched her as she turned on the heel of her high tops and exited the motel room. He stepped back and took in his father’s final appearance. They both were unaccustomed to the look, but if Myers were another stranger on the street it wouldn’t look like a costume, not like the coveralls and mask. He still wouldn’t look like he would belong there, though that is the inherent nature of being a Man-in-Black, the Priests of the Runic Cults.

***

It was decided that Tom and Steve would accompany Myers to the Voorhees meeting. Mr. Freeman forbade Roy or Brian to go along, they had never encountered something this dangerous before. Tom was the only one among their group that knew Runic and ASL, other than Steven and Myers, and a few minor spells. They all did agree with Julia’s assessment that Steven and Jessica shouldn’t go. Steven, Jessica, Roy, and Brian were put in charge of coming up with any back up plan if the three of them were not to return. 

Julia climbed into the driver's seat of a black Cadillac XT5 SUV. The vehicle looked way too much like a small funeral hearse for Steve and Tom. Steve got into the shotgun seat and Myers and Tom got into the back. 

“Ash isn’t the only other Priest that’ll attend,” Julia was telling them as she drove them to the location. “Ice had arrived last night from her district in New York.”

“So you have women priests in your cult?” Steve asked.

“Quite a few, actually,” she answered. 

“Holy women were very important to the old faiths,” said Tom. “The whole stereotype of witches has been used against these women to remove them from power.”

“Weren’t more innocent people burned than actual witches?” 

“The Runes kept their own people out of harm's way by integrating themselves in the local governments and used the Christian’s fear to their advantage by outing rival sects as practicing occultists,” Julia added. 

“Not much different than what they are doing now, it seems,” said Tom.

“If it isn’t broke, don’t need to fix it,” she shrugged. 

“Doesn’t mean it works,” Tom retorted. 

“It’s been working for the past few-thousand years.”

“At the expense and lives of others.”

“No different than any other government in human history.”

“Even Nazis?”

Julia glares at Tom through the mirror: “The Runes don’t like the Nazis because of their appropriation of Northern-European culture and using it to promote their genocidal agenda. In fact, we would much rather recruit from Satanists than Nazis. At least the Satanists aren’t wanting to wholesale slaughter people who are a different race, orientation, and religion than they are.”

“Didn’t Nazis also have some kind of obsession with all this metaphysical shit?” Steve asked.

“They stole from the Covens. They would hire mages, learn their secrets, then kill them once they are done with them. The Covens refused to work with them after that. It was one of the few times the Covens agreed to work together against a common threat.”

“It is so kind of them to do that in between murdering newborns and torturing children,” Tom icily retorted.

“The US government is responsible for the deaths of more children a day than what our society done in two hundred years,” she said.

“They did this to him, and he’s killed over a hundred people,” Tom pointed sideways to Myers. Myers shifted his stare towards him, the first time he’s made any reaction to what was going on around him.

“It’s been… bloodier than on previous occasions,” she squeaked a bit as she said that. “They also never let things go on for as long as it has been. Previous records rarely seen over twenty people were killed, and the ritual could only be completed once in a two-to-three hundred year period. The window to finish the ritual ended at the turn of the millennium, there has been no point at picking it up where it had been left off when the Runes will have to wait another two-hundred years to try again.”

“Not until your grandchildren’s grandchildren generation.”

“Essentially, and it wouldn’t be all of them, just one branch. One branch, and there are five of us. Chances are that it could be one of their descendants just as much as mine.” 

“What if they are warned ahead of time?” 

Julia shrugged, “Don’t know. But I am pretty sure they are going to make sure there isn’t a repeat of what had happened this last time.”

“You know what?” Steve had leaned over to peer into the back seat at Myers. “For a guy that doesn’t say shit, your kids can talk until your brains turn into mush.”

“Excuse you,” Julia expressed. Myers rolled his eyes over to Steve, his shoulders giving a suggestion of a shrug. 

“Where have they been hiding you all of these years anyways?” asked Tom.

“Boarding schools and foster homes,” she answered, dryly. 

“And those were at?” 

“Queens and Brooklyn. Why you even asking?” she quipped back.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but we are just simple country folk. Just trying to be polite, that’s all,” Tom put on a rather thick country accent. Steve gave a little snicker at the jest.

“Illinois isn’t that country, asshat,” she said.

“You’ve been there?” asked Tom.

“Chicago…”

“That doesn’t really count.” 

“What else is there really?”

“Corn,” Tom said, at the same time Myers was doing the ASL for the same word. Julia glared back at them through the rear view mirror. 

“Dad-jokes in stereo, great…” she grumbled. 

They drove for a while outside of town, the houses became fewer and the woods denser. There was an old colonial farmhouse off a gravel road, the farm itself was about five acres of pasture surrounded by woodland. It had two outbuildings, a barn and tract for animals, and a pond on the property. In the drive in front of the house there were two limousines parked, black with tinted windows. Six men and women in suits stood outside the vehicles. Two of them had on the long black coats and black hats, the man they knew as the Priest from Ash, the woman must be the Priest from Ice..

Julia parked her car off to the side of the house. She leaned over to look into the back: “Tom and Steve, get out first and wait beside the car. Then I will--- HEY!”

Myers opened the door and climbed out. Julia wrenched her seatbelt off hissing through her teeth for him to “Get back here!” Steve and Tom shrugged at one another before casually following after the two of them. Steve had reached over to pocket the fobber from the car, Julia was in such a hurry she forgot to take it from the cupholder when she got out.

Julia caught up to him, but didn’t stop him from approaching the group: “Don’t do anything stupid. We are trying to help.”

Myers didn’t look at her, keeping his focus forward. Tom and Steve kept back, if there was going to be a fight they would be the first to get back in the car and leave. The two other Priests already turned to face them. 

“Holy Hell, he’d actually agreed to come,” the Ice Priest remarked to the Ash Priest. She took one step forward, removing the black hat, one that would be more at home being worn by Carmen SanDiego. In fact Ice’s entire look was more akin to a 1920’s spy, with a red suit-dress, black trench coat, and round black hat. She just needed a cigarette on a holder hanging from her mouth and have a derringer shoved down her bra to finish the effect. 

Myers brushed past her, side stepping her attempt to make a more formal introduction. He went to the side of the nearest limo, pulled open the back door, and got in, slamming the door shut behind him.

Julia had stopped before the Priest and gave her a nervous smile: “I’m sorry about that.”

“Don’t apologize, he didn’t try to stab any of us,” she said in return. “You did a good job convincing him to come.”

“I didn’t do shit,” Julia retorted. She bowed her head realizing she was too frank with that response. “I didn’t need to do anything, I mean. He had already made up his mind.” 

There was a cough, the clearing of a throat. The three of them turned to the noise. Tom held his hand up in a wave, Steve was at his shoulder with his arms crossed. 

“Um, yes. Excuse me-- but what do you want us to do?”

Ash turned to Julia and guided her towards them. “Miss Stone here and you both will have to dawn robes and join your Priest in the car. Then it would be a short jaunt to the estate for the meeting.”

“What are we going to do there?” Steve asked.

“Keep quiet, and keep with the other acolytes,” Ash said. 

“Aye-aye, Captain,” Steve gave a salute. 

“Charming,” he said and gave a sniff. 

“It wouldn’t be quite that simple,” Ice spoke up. “This is a special case after all. You’ll have the added responsibility of keeping an eye on Michael Myers, and warn us if he is about to do anything to jeopardize the negotiations. His presence alone would act as a deterrent. But it is also a necessity, as it was property stolen from his own sect.”

“The only people that own Noah is his mother and father,” Steve interjected. “Not some cult, government, or death worshipers.”

“You are right,” Ice said far too cheerfully: “And the sooner we can free the child and his mother from them the sooner they both would be returned to their families. Now, get in your robe and reflect on the type of people your in-laws are, Mr. Freeman.”

Steve was about to go off on the woman when Tom hooked a hand under his arm and pulled him to the side. Julia followed after them. The other four members of the Priest’s group were gathered at the open trunk of one of the limos and getting into long black robe. That group was a mixed bag of people, three men and another woman. One of the men had to be pushing seventy, the other two were roughly in their thirties, and the woman had to be in her early forties. Steve and Tom wouldn’t look too out of place among them, it must have been something the Priests had in mind when picking these specific members. In fact it was Julia that looked the most out of place, being the youngest person at this meeting, daughter to one of the attendees.

The robes were not like the ones Tom remembered from when he donned one to disguise himself as a Cult of Thorn member. Those were broad shouldered, tacky and stiff. The ones they were getting into made them look like they had escaped from the set of Lord of the Rings. They were loose, draped black fabric and had a matching vale to hide their face, yet thin enough to still see through. The sleeves were billowy and were tied tight against the forearms by leather bracers and gloves. Once they were all dressed it was hard to tell who’s who or even what body type any of them were. 

Julia nudged Tom and Steve on the arm and told them to follow her. One other of the hooded figures followed them as well, the elderly man, if remembered correctly. They stood by the limo that Myers had barged his way into, Ice went to take a seat in the back before Julia, Steve, Tom, and the elderly man followed behind them. The three other hooded figures went into the second limo with Ash. 

Ice chose to sit across the aisle from Myers. Julia got the seat beside him, and the elderly man was beside Ice. Tom and Steve got the window seats beside the sliding door, facing each other. Ice knocked on the partition and told the driver to go. 

Ice watched Myers, he was more interested in what was outside than what was going on inside the vehicle. She had a cat-like smile on her tan face. 

“You’re not quite what I had pictured, Mr. Myers,” she finally said. He didn’t look at her, the corner of her mouth twitched.

“Don’t bother,” Tom told her. 

Ice turned her head to him, “What’s wrong with polite conversation?”

“You’re only a pest to him.”

Ice sneered, her gaze going back to Myers: “Is that so?”

“Unless you know Sign Language, you aren’t going to know what he says anyways,” Julia said. Myers did turn to the cloaked girl beside him. 

Ice turned to the girl: “Do you?”

“No.” 

“I know some,” Tom offered. He was ignored.

“A lack in your education, a shame,” she had that cat’s smile on her lips again. “I, on the other hand, am rather good at it,” Ice spoke with both voice and sign: “I have to act as leader and ambassador to several people of several backgrounds and being more inclusive was a need I had to fulfill.” 

Myers made one hand motion before his face, a quick flick of his fingers. Ice scowled and Tom couldn’t stop himself from letting out a laugh.

“What?” asked Julia.

Tom leaned over to tell her between snickers, recreating the motion with his hand: “That means ‘shut-up.’”

Julia gave an “Ah.”

The limos turned off the highway onto a gravel-and-tar road. The landscape was all woodlands at this point, a few houses could be seen nested on hills through the trees. They turned down a private drive, a long private drive. It was a good five minutes before they came across a gate in the roadway, the property was surrounded by a high brick and iron wall, at least as far out as could be seen before the woods swallowed it up. The drivers didn’t even need to call, they stopped for only a second before the gate buzzed and rolled inward. 

It was another few minutes before they finally came out into the opening and upon a mansion. It was a mix of deco and nouveau styles in the details, but the majority of the design was still of a colonial cabin, brick and exposed logs. There was a fountain in the front, turned off but clean, which the drive circled around. The front entrance lacked the stereotypical grand staircase leading to the main door, instead there was a platform before the tall nouveau stained glass doors. A design of a woman pouring water from an amphora into a body of water was painted upon them, a classical design for the Tarot card of The Star, was on one door. The design of The Moon was on the second, two dogs beside a lake howling up at the dour face of the moon. The two designs close together to form a complete picture when the door was closed. 

The doors were opened, a man in a white smock and pants stepped out and stood before the Moon door, and an older woman in a sari followed and stood by the Star door. Between them a woman in her sixties stepped forward. Her face was pale with dark cats-eyeshadow and red lips. Her long wavy hair was loose down her back and stopped at her hips, it might have been dark brown or auburn at some point but had gone to gray. She had on a green peacock dress and wore no shoes. 

“It’s Geraldine,” Ice groused. “I guess they are bringing out their big-guns as well.”

“Who?” asked Steve and Tom.

“Geraldine Hammonds,” the elderly man answered. “She is the high-adviser to the Grand Priest of the Order. She’s the highest ranking member of the Voorhees line. She’s one of the strongest Sorceresses on the face of the Earth.”

“I guess when we didn’t show up last night they called her in,” Steve ventured. 

“She would’ve just got here. Her last known location was in Florida,” Ice remarked. She leaned back in the seat, the foot she had crossed over her knee twisting about. “She’s here because of Myers.” She turned to give the man a smile: “So, big guy, she’ll be on you like socks on a sweater.”

Myers shifted from watching the procession outside to the Ice Priest. 

Ice’s expression became neutral, serious. She uncrossed her legs and watched out the window: “Tom, Julia- stay beside Myers. Randal, Steve- stay beside me.”

Vallets had appeared from a service entrance off the side of the house to open the doors for their guests. The cloaked figures exited first from Ash’s car before the man himself got out. Ice made sure to push out the four from her own car first, she jabbed her high-heeled foot into the seat across from her to keep Myers from getting out ahead of time. “Behave, please.”

Myers glared at her, but waited his turn. She lowered her leg to let him get out before her. Randal gave his hand to her as she stepped out from the car. The three groups stood in line beside the two limos, the priests with their cloaked shadows behind them.

“Welcome, Priests of the Rune,” Geraldine spoke as if she was announcing a wrestling match. Loud, clearly, and as if every word was important. She held her hands up, the feathery eyes on her sleeves splayed out like wings. 

“We are honored by your presence, Madam Sorceress,” Ash said in return, flashing his snake-oiled smile to her as he tipped his hat. 

“I don’t believe an introduction is needed, but one is still warranted out of courtesy: I am Geraldine Hammonds, A High Sorcerer of the Order of the Dead. I am here on behalf of my uncle Ulysses Voorhees to act as mediator and officiate the negotiation proceedings between our two Covens. Now, please, come forward so I may know you better,” Geraldine held out her right hand, palm forward.

Ash was the first to step forward, he climbed the two steps onto the platform before the mansion doors. He held up his own right hand and placed it palm-to-palm against Geraldine’s. “I am The Runic Priest of Ash, Harold Kline.”

“A pleasure,” she replied with a dip of her head. 

Ice stepped forward shortly after. She placed her own hand against the Sorceress’s: “Lady, I am The Runic Priest of Ice: Dominique Rosa.”

Geraldine returned the gesture with a cool smile and nod.

There was a moment of pregnant uneasiness when it came to Myers’s turn to approach the Sorceress. Tom felt a knot in his stomach and Steve was fiditing in place. Julia was holding her breath, her fist clenched at her sides. The Ash and Ice Priests have gone stony in their expressions, the fake smiles freezing on their faces.

The energy all the unease was stirring up was not lost on the Sorceress Geraldine. She raised her head, her hazel eyes peering down the bridge of her nose at him as he approached. She appeared spidery, with her thin frame and long neck being stretched taught as she straightened her stance. She continued to hold her arm forward, the peacock eyes watching from the sleeve. 

Myers paused before her, studying her in return. He didn’t smile, he didn’t frown. His expression was blank, only the hint of interest was in his eyes as they met hers and bore down. She did not yield, nor back down, she gave coldness in return. He lifted up his gnarled and calloused right hand and pressed it against the ring-adorned one she had extended. 

“You’re an interesting one,” she spoke half in a trance, concentrating. “Your energy is all snarled. Kinetic….”

It was Ice, Dominique, that spoke: “Lady Geraldine. This is the Runic Priest of Thorn, Michael Myers.”

“So it is you whom we are really negotiating with,” Geraldine dropped her hand to her side and he did the same. She turned her head to the side to Dominique and Harold: “Your Coven is taking a risk by opening the tiger’s cage, the beast is just as liable to attack the owner as much as the bystander.”

“He’s been a part of our society longer than we have,” Harold told her. 

“Don’t speak of me like I am not here,” Ice was reading out loud. Geraldine and Harold turned to see Myers signing something to them. Ice translated: “I want to get this over with. You want that too.”

Harold’s smile crept onto his face: “Well, well. Where’d you pick up that trick?”

Myers didn’t glare at Harold as he said this, but at Geraldine. Dominique continued to translate: “Boy wouldn’t leave me alone until I did.”

Dominique asked Myers: “Boy?”

Myers spelt out the name. Dominique nodded: “Ah, Steven.”

“The one your people call the ‘pure blood,’” Harold leaned over to answer Geraldine’s unasked question. She turned her eyes to him. “You know, the father to the child that is in dispute right now, yes?”

“I am aware,” she droned. 

“Helios has come to avenge his flock.” 

“You should’ve saved that one for my uncle Ulysses,” Geraldine gave a small sneer. “How long did it take you to come up with that one?”

“I have another one about Jason and the Argonauts,” he returned with a jeer. 

“That would be of poor taste. Perhaps you can tell me that some time later, someplace less formal,” she retorted. “As of now, we have a lunch prepared in the main hall, and your consorts still need to be checked before they are allowed entry-- we’d like to get that done before everything gets cold.”

“By all means,” he said.

Geraldine reached into a pocket on the side of her dress and returned with two crystals, one blue and one green. The gems were about the size of a fun-sized candy bar. She held the blue one out to the woman in the sari and the green one to the man. The pair took the crystals and went down before the row of cloaked figures. The woman started on the right of the line, the man on the left. They held the crystals out before the faces of each of the figures. 

Tom closed his eyes when the man passed the crystal in front of him, but there was no reaction and the man moved on to the next in line. Steve had a similar reaction, hoping that nothing would happen, and when nothing did, he let out a breath. The woman hadn’t yet brought her crystal before them, but she had stopped before Julia. The crystal letting off a glow. 

“Remove your mask,” the woman told her. Julia lifted up the vail to show her face. 

“Let me see,” Geraldine called out. The woman stepped aside to let her mistress see the girl. 

Julia squared her jaw and held her head high. 

Geraldine turned to Myers, eyebrow arching at him in a question. He signed “They dragged her here.” but it was Dominique that spoke: “We had brought her as leverage. He hasn’t met her before today.”

“I can read what he’s saying perfectly fine,” Geraldine told Dominique. Dominique held her hands up and took a stance beside Harold. Geraldine then put a hand on her hip and stroked her chin with the other… “She can stay. But as a guest--”

She held up her right hand again, palm out: “Girl, come forward and introduce yourself.”

Julia flipped back the hood and approached. She climbed the two steps onto the front porch platform and stood before the elder woman. She raised her hand, placing it against hers: “I am Julia Stone…. I don’t think I have a rank or anything like that.”

“That is fine, child,” Geraldine gave her a broad smile: “Stay beside your father and do not stray among the house. You are to be granted the authority of Lady among your clan. It is your right to do so.”

“We don’t actually have a ‘Lady’ equivalent in our Coven,” Dominique interjected. 

“As guest among our house and under the umbrella of our hospitality, you do for this time, Priest,” Geraldine quipped back. “What harm would there be to have another voice for your people?”

“She barely knows what is going on, she is still in training,” Harold said in a long drawing hiss. “Dominique spoke the truth, she is here as leverage. We were not certain if we could convince our Avatar to come in peace. He will listen to his son, which he could not come, so we guessed the both of them will listen to a daughter before they would either of us.”

Geraldine scowled at him, then to Myers to see if he had anything to add. Myers stood still, nonplussed, turned towards the girl now at his side. When he showed no sign of responding, Geraldine gave a shake of her head: “Diamonds grown in a lab are becoming less distinct and harder to tell the difference between those grown in the ground, and often they are of a higher quality as they do not touch the impurities of nature.”

“Poetic,” Harold drolled. 

Geraldine sniffed, facing away from the Ash and Ice Priests. She held up her hand and gave a command: “Please finish the scour and admit the rest of the thrall.”

The subordinates bowed their heads to the Lady. They held up the crystals once again, passing each of them across the face of the rest of the cloaked figures. Once satisfied, the entourage was permitted to join their respective Priests’ side. The Lady took the lead in the procession through the house, the two that possessed the crystals had closed the double doors behind them and followed at the back of the group. 

The inside of the house appeared to be a lodge, it had a large entry room with a central natural river rock fireplace, surrounded by plush lounges and chairs. Tall glass windows at the back of the room peered out into the woods and the waters of a lake could be seen in the distance peeking through the thicket. A candelabra-style crystal chandelier hung before the tall windows. On both sides of the room, staircases lead up to the second floor; they were built out of exposed logs and had post-Edwardian Era metal designs on the railings and banisters. Taxidermied animals stood in corners and their mounted heads decorated the walls between sprawling landscape paintings of boats on the sea and of farm houses amid fields of wheat. 

A set of dark heavy-oak doors was under the right-hand staircase. Geraldine opened them, ushering the Priests and their cohorts to enter behind her. They were lead into a long room, it was the dining hall. The entire North wall was glass, facing out to the same lake and woods that was seen from the lounge. This room was decorated similar to the previous room, minus the dead animals. Landscape paintings lined the South wall, save for a two-way swinging door that lead into the servant’s wing of the house and likely to a kitchen and pantry. There were two massive tables in the room, heavy oak like the doors and beams above, with chairs made from the same wood and decorated with green upholstery. 

The room was already occupied. Nine people were already in attendance. They were on the South-side of the large tables, all but one person stood when they entered. The four placed at the closer table, two men and two women, dressed alike in black cotton shifts and white hijabs over their heads, faces exposed. The two men were both black, one woman was middle-eastern, and the second woman was caucasian. 

At the further table, the one person that did not stand was an elderly white man, his hair thin dandelion fluff and his eyes peering at them through thick glasses, he was situated at the head of the table in an electric wheelchair. He was also the only person in civilian clothing, posh in style, a button down shirt under a sweater vest and a pair of black slacks. The others at the table were all men of middle-eastern descent, each of them adorned in gold filigree. One of them dressed in red robes, another in white, and two in black. 

The two that had followed the group into the room guided half the Runic Acolytes to sit at the nearer table with the four black-and-white robed figures. Tom managed to maneuver himself near to Julia and Myers and wasn’t separated from the group. Steve wasn’t as lucky, and was relegated to the ‘kiddy table’ to his consternation. Dominique, Harold, Michael, and Julia were moved to the head table. Harold was placed closest to the elderly man, then it was Dominique, Michael, Julia, Tom, Randal, and one of Ash’s unnamed members. Geraldine moved to the South-side of the table and took the position that was vacant to the elderly man’s left. 

“Patrons of the Order,” she announced holding her hand out to each in turn: “These are the Runic Cult Representatives: Harold Kline, Priest of Ash; Dominique Rosa, Priest of Ice; Michael Myers, Priest of Thorn--”

The Order members wore various expressions of interest, annoyance, and concern when Myers was announced. They didn’t speak, as it would be rude to do so before introductions were finished. However, the men stared at him and their members on the lesser table would steal glances. 

Geraldine, however continued: “And this is Julia Stone, the acting Lady of Thorn.”

This did turn their attention away from Michael for a brief moment as they regarded the young woman beside him with some consideration. 

Geraldine turned to introduce the men representing the Order, from least importance to most, from the two black robes, then to white, and then to red: “Runic Priests-- these are the representatives for the Order of the Dead: Chamberland Bankari Haik; Ambassador Usi Najjar; Cleric Mosegi Nahas, and High-Priest Darius Safar.” 

And finally she turned to the elderly man beside her: “And finally, this is our host and patriarch of my family, Ulysses James Voorhees.” 

Ulysses held up his two gnarled hands: “Guests and Patrons, please be seated and we shall break bread.”

The oak chairs moved effortlessly along the ornate rug beneath the table, not a single snag or squeal among them. Julia had to stand back up to pull Myers’ chair out for him and tell him to sit down, or else he would have continued to stand and glare at the gilded men across the table. The waiters poured out from the double doors along the south wall, each carrying a silvery metal tray with cups and carafes on top. They went about asking everyone “Water, Coffee, or Tea?” then placed mug down before them and filled it with the offered beverage. 

There was only one snag, and that was when one waiter asked Michael what he wanted. He made the sign but the waiter didn’t understand and gave a long confused “ummmm…?” Dominique, Tom, and Geraldine all answered “Coffee.” at the same time. 

Michael turned to Geraldine and asked her: How long is this going to take?

“No business until the second course,” Geraldine gave a crooked smile. 

Darius had leaned over to whisper Usi a question and Usi responded in a hush. Darius seemed contented with the answer. 

At the same time, Julia had leaned over to Tom and quietly asked “What did he say?” 

Tom responded: “He’s asking how long this is going to take-- Keep an eye out.”

Julia nodded, straightening backup, sitting properly in the chair. 

The first of the dishes came out, it was served on a large platter that was lowered into the center of the tables. It was horderves of a sorts, finger foods that was to be eaten by hand and directly off the platter. There weren't any plates or silverware set out before any of the guests. Julia leaned in to whisper to Michael: “Eat with your right hand only.” 

Michael stared right into her eyes, showing only apathy on his face. He started to lift his left hand only for his sleeve to be snagged under the table. He rounded about to find Dominique’s hand ahold of his coat sleeve. He gave her a hard glare. She leaned over and whispered to him: “Now is not the time to be contrary.”

“Is there a problem Lady Priest?” Ambassador Usi inquired. 

“Just herding cats,” Dominique smiled in return. Michael fixed his eyes on her, she let his arm go. 

“A task not unlike Sisyphus and his rock,” Usi returned the jest. He leaned back in the chair: “But tell me, I was under the impression that the Sign of Thorn had been scourged from your ranks by this same man and those that remained were assimilated into other Signs.”

“That is inaccurate,” Harold spoke up. “That particular group had gone through an aggressive change of leadership. Myers is acting Priest as he was the one to upset the order and the last survivor to undergo the rights of initiation. And because leadership among our Society is based on the combination of strength, power, and democratic committee, he hasn’t been challenged by any other for the position.” 

“But as you say, he is the last: Who would there be to challenge?” 

Myers simply pointed aside to Julia beside him. Julia blanched and averted her face, embarrassed. 

“Ah, she is but a child,” Usi scoffed. 

Julia jerked her head back up, scowling. 

Myers started to sign something, Dominique translated for those that could not read: “If something were to happen, the title will fall to Steven,” she corrected his slang of calling Steven “Boy.” “-- I know nothing of the others. They would have to come to an arrangement with him.”

“And so we get to the root of our current situation,” Usi bombastically announced. “The dispute on who’s heir this child in question is.” 

“And we shall save that question for later, Your Excellency,” Geraldine interjected polightly. 

“I would wish for the mother of the child to be present before we go into further detail,” the High Priest Darius told the Ambassador. “We can only glean so much information from the people holding her child captive, I would be interested in what she has to say.”

“We will bring her before lunch is concluded,” Ulysses complied. He waved his thin veiny hand at the man and woman pair of caretakers. He held three knobby fingers up to them. They gave a bow and exited through a door on the East wall opposite of the one everybody came in. 

Steve watched the pair leave. His heart tightened in his chest, he hoped Stephanie and Noah weren’t harmed. He picked at the ‘finger food’ that was at the table, and slipped another bite of the chicken and cheese curry dish under the black veil and into his mouth. He chewed on it without really tasting it. He wanted to go over to the main table and throttle the old man for taking his daughter and grandson. He didn’t like that he got separated from the main group and now had to rely on a mute psychopath and cultists to get them back. He couldn’t decide who was worse, the people rescuing them or the people having to rescue them from. The lesser of two evils is still a choice of doing evil. It was the rail-cart problem of either killing your family or killing an entire town’s worth of strangers. 

The waiting staff came and refilled cups and removed the platters from the center of the table. The second course came on more shared platters, again no plates or silverware had been placed before them. This course was more of a meal of bread and fondue type dishes, where the bread was to be torn to pieces and dipped in the various sauces before consuming them. The Cultist’s gloves made it awkward to eat the dish, as did being able to eat it without lifting back their face covering. 

This was a power play. It was recognized for what it was by Dominique and Harold, and even Myers, Tom, and Steve knew it. Myers and Tom knew the game as soon as they sat down, the lack of silverware was to reduce the amount of potential weaponry, even a spoon can cause damage if enough force was behind it. And plates could be broken and the shards used as knives. To use one of the serving platters would be too grand and showy of a move, it would involve having to climb onto the table to grab it, over turn the food, and then go after the target, if they haven’t already escaped from the room before you can get to them. It would be quicker to climb over the table and strangle them with your bare hands, not really a strategy that would work in a room full of people, and Myers was perhaps the only person in this room that could quickly dispatch more than one target in a short amount of time in that way. They were also told not to bring a knife or any weapons, but that doesn’t mean that their host doesn’t have one or any of the Order representatives. 

They were ten-minutes, at least, in their uncomfortably silent meal when the east door opened again. The woman in the sari came in first, followed by Stephanie, and then the man in white. Stephanie was in what looked like a blue work dress from the mid-century, no shoes on, and she looked exhausted. In her arms close to her chest was a bundle in a quilted blanket that couldn’t be mistaken for anything else other than a baby. Noah’s little feet wiggled and kicked under the blanket and he fussed a little. Stephanie scanned the room, stopping on every visible face. She froze and took a second glance; her eyes going wide as the little switch in the back of her brain saw through the unusually clean and well-dressed appearance of Michael Myers at the table. 

Stephanie made a low keening groan before she addressed him directly: “I really fucked this up didn’t I?”

Myers stared back at her and slowly nodded in affirmation. 

“Stephanie!” 

She whirled around at the familiar voice calling out her name. Coming towards her was one of the black robed figures, tearing off the hood and cloth wrapping their face to show that of her father. Breathlessly she cried: “Dad!”

Steph broke away from her escorts and was enveloped in her father’s outstretched arms. Steve, tears flowing down his face, cupped her cheeks in his hands and gave her kisses all over her face. She sobbed, open and free. The bundle between them started to cry and moan, Steve pulled away from his daughter to look at the face of the fussing baby. 

“I thought... I would...never see any of you... ever again,” Steph heaved between breaths and brushed away the tears with the palm of her hand. 

“I would have done anything to get you both back,” Steve assured his daughter. 

Aside, Tom had stood from the table and approached the little group; he pulled back the hood from his own face. Julia felt a tap on her shoulder, she turned to see Myers looking at her. Myers nudged his chin in that direction, wordlessly directing her to over there. Myers, himself, pushed away from the table and rose to his feet, ignoring Dominique’s request for the both of them to stay put. 

Geraldine stood to watch, a frown deep on her painted face; she did not move from her spot. Harold leaned over the back of his chair to observe the “touching family reunion” that was taking place. Dominique continued to grouse and glare. The four representatives from the Order patiently waited. It was they who had requested the girl to join them after all, they are merely inspecting what fruit their tree now bore. 

“Um-- Hi?” Tom sheepishly approached, holding his hand up in a pathetic wave. 

Steve gave a deep breath and held one arm out to Tom, keeping the other around his daughter’s shoulder. “Steph, this is Tom Doyle.”

Steph finally noticed the man and kind of recognized him: “You’re Steven’s adopted dad aren’t you?”

“Yep, that’s me,” Tom chuckled nervously. “I kinda wish we’d met under better circumstances.”

Steph gave a sniff, “I’m sorry for acting like such a tool.”

“Let’s leave all that in the past,” Tom told her. “This stuff is scary, I wouldn’t blame anybody if they wanted to run and hide from it.”

Steph solemnly nodded, resting her head against her father’s shoulder.

Tom then held out his arms and gave her a broad smile: “But, right now, I would like to see this new grandbaby and revel in the feeling of being old as mud.”

“Oh! Right!” She piped up, quickly brushing away another tear from her face. Steph carefully shifted the wiggly bundle from her shoulder. Tom deftly scooped the child from her and into the crook of his arm, a motion he done with the ease of practice. He cooed the baby’s name, holding him close to his chest. 

Steph started to smile, until she saw that Myers had slipped into the outskirts of their group without her notice. She avoided looking at him, instead wrapping both arms around her father, embracing him in a proper hug, one she wasn’t able to give him with a baby in her arms.

“I remember when your daddy was this small,” Tom was chortling to the baby. Noah, being just a couple days old, had gone into potato-sack mode and wasn’t fussing or crying anymore, but was content with being walked and rocked about. “Though, this is a lot like that last time… but with less blood--”

“And with less zombies,” Steve interjected.

“I hope I don’t have to go through this again when I am seventy,” sighed Tom. 

Myers made a comment about it, but Tom wasn’t too sure about the translation. It was along the lines of “Kill me before then.” so he’d made a guess it was meant to say “I hope I’m dead before that happens.”

It was then that Tom realized that Myers had crept up so close to him. Michael was looming nearer to get a good look at Noah, which was hard to do while Tom was moving about. Julia still hung about in the back, unsure of what she was doing.

“Julia,” Tom addressed the young woman. “Come see your nephew.” 

“I’m not really good with babies, sir,” she said in return, even though she was inching a bit forward to actually see the child.

“Nephew?” Steph had caught the odd nomenclature. “I thought Steven’s sister was named Alex?”

“Yes and no. Lex is my daughter. Julia… is his,” he said, motioning a shoulder to Myers. 

Steph furrowed her eyebrows, confused. “I thought Steven was an only child.”

“It’s called In-Vitro Fertilization. He didn’t have a choice, Dear Lady,” The Ash Priest Harold snidely called to the group.

“Oh…” Steph replied, but then the gravity and implications settled in: “Oh, God.”

However, something else caught Myers attention in the statement. He snapped his fingers to draw attention to himself and pointed at Harold, then to Steph. He started signing something, looking between Dominique and Geraldine. Tom couldn’t catch everything that was being conveyed, as Myers had turned his back to the group to address the others. A wicked smile started to curl across Dominique’s face. Geraldine scowled at what was being said, Usi the Ambassador seemed more amused.

“What?” more than a few people asked at the same time, including Steph, Steve, and Tom. 

Dominique, still smiling: “He’s asking what qualifies as being a Lady of a House.”

“The Lady of a House is based on several factors,” The white-robed Cleric Mosegi Nahas spoke up. “Often it is the eldest daughter or the wife of the Patron of the household. If neither is available, or that person refuses the duties, it goes to the next daughter or the wife or daughter of the second in command, and if that fails: the most powerful and-or skilled among the household.”

Myers pointed to Geraldine, then to Stephanie. He then signed something directly to Geraldine, which she did not approve of. The woman shook her head at him.

“That’s right!” Dominique chortled. “Geraldine gave Julia the right to be acting Lady of Thorn prior to entering this house. But, Our Priest of Thorn here didn’t know about her until earlier today. None of his daughters could be acting Lady because he hasn’t met them before to approve any of them. But Miss Stephanie has been part of their dynamic for the past year or better.”

“She’s not married into their family, she can’t be the Lady,” Ulysses retorted. “She is still property of her parent’s household until they give her away. And her mother, Jennifer, had Stephanie out of wedlock.”

“Hey! We did get married!” Steve shouted back. 

“More than a year after the fact, Mr. Freeman,” the old man snipped back. “And, have-you-know, she did not have permission from her family to do so.”

“It’s not my fault her mom was killed by her demonic undead brother before she could see us get married,” he snapped back.

“It still stands,” he slapped her hand against the table. “Her late mother, her, and the daughter beside you: they were never formally given away from the family and are still under our sphere of influence until otherwise stated.” 

“I’ll allow it,” Darius said with much amusement. The look that came upon Ulysses face could spoil milk. Steve was shocked into silence by the abrupt declaration, the retort he was about to deliver rendered moot.

“My Lord, why?” Ulysses implored the High-Priest.

The High Priest stood, folding the fabric of his scarlet red robes behind his back. “This is a situation that came about from the folly of the young and foolish. The marriage between that man and the one called Jennifer was a correction of their past mistakes. We will grant their daughter, Stephanie, the same opportunity to correct the same mistake. And, if she promises to do so, she will be granted the authority of Lady, effective as soon as she agrees. However, any decision made under the title will be negated retroactively if she balks out of the arrangement.”

“Michael! What have you gotten me into?” Stephanie fretted at the instigator. 

“Isn’t it rather obvious, Miss Freeman?” Harold the Ash Priest sneered. “They’ll take your child if you don’t agree to marry the father.”

“Why?” Steph snapped back: “I don’t have to do anything. People don’t have to be married to have a child and raise it. That’s just some--”

“Cultural differences, Miss Freeman,” Darius interjected, sharply. “No amount of modern feminist freedom in the end will ever compensate for the fact that men are in general stronger and more violent than women. When the laws of the land that protect their rights are no longer in place, women will always find themselves in second place.”

“You make it sound like Steven’s going to beat the shit out of me until I am cowed,” Steph scoffed.

The High Priest regarded her for a moment, “On the contrary, you are in need of protection. And tell me, who are here beside you? Who had came to your rescue?”

Steph looked at her father, then to Tom… and even to Myers. She fumed, but she didn’t want to admit that the piggish man had a point. 

“I do not want you to leave here believing us to be any crueler than the masters of the other hand,” Darius told her, enclinging one hand towards the Priests of Ash and Ice. “You are protected and you are cared for by these men. On your own, you and your child are free game for predators like the Voorhees, our order, and the Runic Cults. I am telling you to take the easiest option out of this situation.”

“What if I do, what will happen then?” she asked. 

“Do you love the man?”

Steph blinked, caught unaware by the question: “Erm… yeah, but--”

“Then, you and your child will go home. You will get married to this Steven a few weeks from now, and live out the rest of your lives together,” he mused.

“My Lord,” Ulysses Voorhees spoke: “Our claim on the girl and child hasn’t changed, you can’t just take our property away from us like that.”

“I am being fair, not unjust,” Darius clipped. “We are offering your family an extension in exchange. You are to be given 16 years from today, an additional five years from the original cut-off time. You are to either find another heir to the family, continuing as you where prior to this incident. Or, wait out the time to propose your offer to this child himself. Where he would make the choice on his own as he enters adulthood. Until then, your family are not to make any ill-intentioned advance on this boy, or any potential siblings, until they are capable of making such a choice on their own.”

“I won’t live that long. And, by allowing her to join their family would mean the child would grow up in a household governed by the Runic Cults,” Voorhees continued. 

“I think not,” he countered. “The parents and grandparents have tried their hardest to separate themselves from the influences of both the Runic Cults and our Order of the Dead. This child, their Noah, is rather aptly named, as he would likely be the first of both families to have a choice. He will see the end of their storm and have the choice to walk free or head back into the darkness.” 

“How are we to insure that they will not influence the child’s choice unfairly?” Geraldine pointed an accusatory finger to the Priests of Ash and Ice, whom sat rather primly in their victory.

“Every family needs a crazy rich aunt,” the High Priest smiled slyly. “Perhaps you can mend fences in your own family and actually treat the members therein with more generosity and civility.” 

“They kidnapped me and Noah, I am not going to forgive them just like that,” Steph declared with a snap of her fingers. 

“You have the right to demand compensation for your pain and suffering,” Mosegi Nahas said. The representatives of the Order were now all standing, even those on the secondary table had got to their feet. “The Voorhees and The Order owe your family, not just for this incident, but for many decades’ worth of toil and strife. From everything that happened with your great-grandmother and your uncle, your grandmother’s death, and what had transpired in the past couple days.”

“He had already tried to buy my son from me,” she pointed to the scowling elder in the wheelchair. 

“I was the one to arrange this meeting,” Geraldine spoke out. “Even if our wishes hadn’t been fulfilled from it.”

“It was the correct thing to have done in your position, Lady,” Ambassador Usi said. “There needed to be an official edict handed down about the child. If such an under-the-table agreement had been made, it would not have been acknowledged. If it were just a family matter, you would have been able to keep the child and been left to suffer the consequences of your actions on your own. However, when dealing with an outside force, and such a powerful one as the Runic Cults, both sides do not wish to kick off a war that could last the next thousand years and cost many more lives.”

“We would have not stopped what would have happened if this meeting was not called,” Harold wove his fingers together, giving the girl and her party his golden-toothed smile. “It was by the skin of our teeth we were able to cut off your companions from laying siege to this lovely home and getting themselves killed in the process. And because of our intervention, we are able to get favorable results without the needless bloodshed and loss of resources.” 

“Why all of this pomp and parade then if most of this was already decided?” Tom asked.

“We needed witnesses,” Dominique said. “This was not unlike a hearing or the signing of legal documents. There had to be at least one person from the branch of Thorn to officiate because of the child’s lineage. There is only one true member remaining, that of Michael Myers. His children, Steven, Julia, and the others: they are half-members at best-- pretenders to the Throne of Thorn, as you will. Though Steven does have the highest claim to it, if he ever chooses to take it up after Myers.” 

“Why didn’t you let him come?” Steph asked, peevishly. “Noah is his son, he had a right to be here.”

“We are letting cooler heads prevail,” Harold answered. “We had to have Myers here, and we have our ways to deal with him. But to have him and his clone here at the same time, both of them angry and pissed off-- We would’ve been putting people in body bags before the second course.” 

“It is also about power dynamics,” Cleric Mosegi added. “We would’ve been outclassed by your sorcerers. We had forbade your mother from arriving for that same reason, as she had some experience with magic even if it is underutilized.”

“And it was to your advantage that you had such champions arrive instead, Lady Stephanie,” Darius said. “Because you and the child’s father are not married and had been estranged for many months now, to have your father and his fathers come together for this common cause showed us the true strength of your family’s bonds. As it wasn’t just your family nor just his family acting: but both of them. Together.”

“What do we do know?” Steve asked.

“Go home,” Darius reiterated. 

“I mean right this second. What happens next?”

“As far as I am concerned, lunch is over and our business is concluded: we are leaving. You need to figure out your own arrangements.” He waved his hand and the four minions at the lesser table moved towards the West Door. 

“You’re leaving us alone with them?” Steph flung her hand around at Geraldine, Ulysses, and The Runic Priests.

Darius paused, eyeing her steadily. He reached into the sleeve of his gilded red robe. He pulled out a red cylindrical palm-sized object from the folds. With a flick, a four inch long blade unfolded in his hand. He took the pocket knife, held it up for the room to see it, closed it back up, and tossed it across the room to Myers. Myers snatched it from the air and examined it in his palm.

Harold and Dominique both rose from the table, their acolytes scrambling to get to their feet and to their Priest’s side. Ulysses swore under his breath, his two lackies joining his side. Yet, Geraldine remained stoic, clenching and unclenching her fingers at her side.

“That’s your protection, girl,” Darius then turned following his Ambassador, Cleric, and Chamberland out the door. His black and white robed followers closing the door behind them all. 

It was a standoff that remained in the room, the three distinct groups watching each other in silence-- waiting for the first move to be made. An uneasy minute went past, then a second… 

It was Dominique that spoke up first: “We drove you hear you know. It’s a fifteen-mile walk through woods and backroads just to get back to the highway.”

“It’s about five to the farm house,” Steve said, holding up the fobber to Julia’s car. Julia patted down her sides, discovering her pockets were empty. She folded her arms and frowned at Steve.

“We’ll still get there before you,” Dominique sneered. 

“Yeah, but I doubt you are going to do anything drastic,” Steve cooley twirled the key chain around his finger.

“It’s not her car-- it is ours.” 

“We can call a taxi,” Tom pointed out.

“I don’t care how-- just get out of my house!” the old man demanded. 

They all heard the thump and whine of a helicopter starting nearby. The roar of the motor ramped up and the chopping of the propellers quickened as it prepared to lift off. The house vibrated under their feet, picture frames shook against the walls, debris pinged off the windows from the wind.

“It looks like they aren’t going to come back to help you,” Harold turned to say to Ulysses, his toothy grin at its fullest. 

“Leave,” Voorhees stressed in return. The two priests bowed to him. The duo waved their hands and their lackeys followed beside them. 

Dominique put a hand against Julia’s shoulder, stopping her from exiting the room with them.

“What?” Julia asked, confused.

“You aren’t coming with us,” she told the youth. Julia turned to those that remained in the room, to her father, Myers not looking towards her at all. 

“Why? Why can’t I go with you?” she said in a whisper, trying her hardest not to sound like an upset child.

“You belong with them now,” Dominique said.

“I don’t know these people.”

“Expect your brother and sisters to show up before the end of this month,” Dominique answered that one loud enough that all in the room wouldn’t be mistaken as to what she said.

“Why are you doing this to me? To us? What right--” Julia huffed losing what control she had on her emotions.

“We have all the right to do so,” Dominique snapped back, silencing her. “You are not a child, we no longer need to tend to your every want and need.”

“But the Cult is my home,” she retorted.

Dominique pointed over the young woman’s shoulder and at the acting Priest of Thorn, and the girl’s blood father. “They are part of this organization as much as I am. They are also your blood. If you do not want to stay with them, then you are not to be part of our organization any longer.”

“What if I refuse?”

“You’re an adult,” Dominique patiently explained. “Get a job and pretend we don’t exist.”

“But--” Julia’s placation went unnoticed. Dominique and Harold brushed past her, as did the other robed figures, and exited the room, leaving her behind. Julia bowed her head, she didn’t turn to look behind her at those she was left with, she remained rooted in that spot, broken.

“Now the rest of you need to get out,” Ulysses grumbled again. The rest began to shuffle towards the door. Yet, Myers remained still, gaze fixed upon Ulysses and Geraldine. 

“I am still the better sorcerer than you are, Mr. Myers,” Geraldine told him. “Follow them, or I will make you go.”

Myers narrowed his eyes at her, turning the knife in the palm of his hand, and took a step back towards the rest of his party.

“Hey, old man!” Steve had remembered something, and earned a sour look for the insolence: “What did your people do with all of our shit from the hospital?”

Ulysses motioned to the woman of his two helpers, giving her permission to speak: “Tasja?” 

“We had brought your belongings here,” she said. “They will be fetched and given to you upon leaving the premises.”

“Wait,” Steph told her father and the others before facing Voorhees and Geraldine: “Your leader said you owe us compensation. Kicking us out on our ass isn’t compensation.”

“What do you want?” He growled the question.

“First off: transportation,” she started.

“Fine, and what else?”

“They said for pain and suffering: so pay for the hospital bill and for anything else my family had spent in the past few days to save me.”

“The hospital is already paid for,” he answered. “We did that to hide that you where even there. As for your family, just send us a bill of expenses. Tasja will also give you an envelope with petty cash in your belongings.” 

“How are we to get ahold of you if we want anything else?” Steve asked.

“Any further dealings would be done through me,” Geraldine told him. “I will provide you with a phone number and P. O. box if you need to get in contact with me. And I plan on checking in on the child personally to make sure he is being tended to adequately.” 

“Like hell you would,” Steph huffed.

“Lady Stephanie,” Geraldine giving an extra little emphasis on the “Lady” part of the address. “Incase you had failed to notice what had happened in the past half-hour, you had just been removed from one master and are now under the hand of another as if you were no better than a whelping dog.”

“There’s only one bitch I see here,” Steph retorted.

“Regardless!” Geraldine continued. “The Branch of Thorn may be defunct from the rest of the Runic Tree, it is still part of it as you had witnessed just a moment ago with how they dealt with the girl. They are rebuilding its ranks. No amount of protesting would change that you are now part of it. Refuse them, and you and Noah will be brought back to us in full. Stay where you are, and Noah will be given a choice on which or even if he wishes to join either organization.”

“And you are wanting to make sure he isn’t unfairly biased when that happens…” she grumbled.

“Young boys idolise the older men in their families as they grow up, be it fathers, brothers, uncles, or grandfathers…” Geraldine let that last one sink in for a while. “We never can tell who he would attach his affections upon. So, when the question is to be proposed to him, would he favor the people he’d grown fond of or people he hardly knew?” 

“Noah’s not going to be left alone with you or any of your people, ever,” Steph warned.

“Perhaps,” Geraldine shrugged. “But I would extend that same warning to some of the other people in this room as well.”

Nobody needed to ask who she had meant. Myers just shrugged, then folded up the knife and it disappeared into a pocket on the long black coat. 

“When should we expect you skulking around?” groused Steph.

“Major holidays and birthdays,” Geraldine answered rather chipperly. “And perhaps some vacations during summer and winter break. I hope you don’t mind going to places like Italy, France, and Brazil for a few weeks out of the year.”

“I don’t have a passport,” she answered.

“Steven just got one,” Tom noted: “With Dublin, and all.”

“Just as long as they have one, you can even bring your fourth cousin twice removed or your dog’s groomer’s best friend,” Geraldine fluttered her hand dismissively. 

Steph had momentarily forgotten about Steven wanting to go to Dublin. She would need to get a passport for herself and Noah just so they could visit him while he was getting his studies finished so it wouldn’t be just him flying across the ocean to see them. 

“We’ll all work on that,” Steve gave his daughter’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. 

The sound of a raspberry drew their attention. Myers had a disgusted look across his normally stoic face as he signed something that obviously meant he couldn’t fly.

“That’s a good thing then,” Geraldine answered. “There’s no need to be selfish.”

“Erm… If you don’t mind me asking: but, what should we call you in public, Lady Geraldine?” Tom spoke up. “I mean, we can’t go around sounding like we escaped from a Renaissance faire.”

“Gerri would be fine. Most of my family call me that,” she offered. 

“We don’t want to be that familiar,” Steve said.

“Then just use my first name, I don’t know what else to tell you,” she held her hands palm up to her sides. She lowered them again and knocked on the table, “But anyhow. If all of you will head back into the lounge, I will see to all your arrangements. There is a bathroom and wash closet adjacent to the entrance, beneath the other staircase, in case you’ll need to tidy up before leaving.”

Ulysses didn’t say anything further. He had backed his wheelchair away from the table, the man in the white tunic opening the far door for the elder to roll down the hallway. Geraldine followed after the both of them, closing the door. They could hear an audible click as the heavy oak doors were locked. 

Tom handed Noah back to Stephanie and was the first to approach the door, opened it, and held it open for Steve and Steph. He waved to Julia with a soft “Hey? Hello?” but she didn’t even look up from her shoes. He gave a shrug and let the door close behind him.

“Just leave me here, alone,” Julia told the only other person in the room. Michael was beside her, not even realizing he had crossed the room. He fished the red ornate pocket knife back out of the duster’s pocket and held it out to her. 

Julia looked at it, scornfully, then aside him. “What do you want?”

Michael held it out between his thumb and fingers, more insistent this time. She snatched it from him, but didn’t look away from his stoic face. He walked away from her, placing the wide brimmed hat back upon his balding shorn head. He approached the door and opened it. He left her there, not even looking back at her, the closing door’s loud thump echoed in the empty hall.

The three of them were in the bathroom with the baby. Steph was getting some help with cleaning Noah up in the sink from a dirty diaper. She was talking about how they deserve to clean some shit off their nice towels after what they’ve done. Tom was the first to notice Myers enter the room.

“Is she alright?” Tom asked. 

Myers only made the sign for time and sat down at one of the plush lounge chairs that surrounded the central fireplace. He leaned his head back and tipped the hat forward over his face.

Twenty minutes passed before the sound of a door opening drew the group’s attention. It was not the one to the dining hall, but a third door at the base of the opposite stairwell. The lady Tasja returned with one of the uniformed staff members. They rolled a trolley in with bags and suitcases upon it. Tasja ordered the staff to set the trolley in the foyer by the door. 

“These are your things,” she announced to Steve and Stephanie specifically. “You may go through them if you are seeking anything specific. Please do so before you leave so we may search for or replace what is lost.” 

Steve was the one to get up to check the luggage. Steph had settled down in a recliner chair beside the panoramic windows with Noah. She had taken a hand-knitted afgan from the back of a chair and draped over her upper body, trying to afford herself some modesty around the three men as she nursed Noah. 

Steve found Steph’s phone along with her purse and a pair of shoes for her to wear. He took these things over to her and sat them on the end table beside the recliner. She picked up the cell with her free hand, she tried to turn it on, but got the “low battery” warning and it shut off again. 

“We should call mom and Steven to tell them we are alright,” she said. 

“I thought of that a while ago, but I don’t think that’ll be a good idea while we are still stranded in their house,” Steve told her. He had gone to the window, discreetly turning his back to her, watching the scenery beyond the well-maintained lawn and brick patio. He heard the scratchy scraping sound of metal on metal before he saw what caused it. He pressed his forehead against the glass to see where the sound was coming from. It was a window opening. In the room next door. A moment later he saw Julia climb out…. And bolt across the lawn. 

“We have a runner!” Steve announced. He turned around to face the room. “Hey! Julia’s making a run for it!”

Tom ran to the window, getting there in time to watch her vanish into the brush beyond the lawn. “Oh my God!”

“What’s got into her?” Stephanie exclaimed.

Michael didn’t move. He remained reclined in the chair with the hat covering his face. The lack of concern annoyed the others in the room.

“Are you going to go after her?” Steve demanded of him.

Wall.

“She isn’t going to get far,” Tom frowned. “Though, I wonder how many exits there are passed that wall?” 

“Just the front gate is above ground,” Tasja answered the question. The group forgot she was still there. “The rest of the exits are underground. The wall surrounds twenty acres of land, this property is close to the south-east corner of it. She is heading west. It will take her about a half an hour to get to that wall through the brush on foot.”

“So are you going to go after your daughter or not?” Steve reiterated the question to Myers.

“She will be fine,” Tom translated what was being told. He folded his arms, “I don’t really think that, but whatever.” 

“Other than drowning in the lake, there isn’t really anything on the property that would cause her harm,” said Tasja. “We’ve purged the property of any large animals like bears, coyotes, and deer.”

“She can’t stay out there,” said Stephanie.

“I’ll go get her,” offered Tom. 

“No.” 

Tom stopped in his tracks at the word. Steve and Tasja looked surprised, Steve more perturbed. Steph shook her head, frustrated. She knew Myers wasn’t completely mute, Steven once explained to her that he could talk, but there was some kind of block preventing him from speaking more than one or two simple words in a span of a few hours. It had to be something serious for him to break his silence and spend one of those few allotted words. 

“What the fuck, man?” Steve rounded about. 

Myers signed something, Tom read all of what was said before he conveyed it: “He says she’ll be either at the gate or back at the house in an hour, maybe two. Don’t make her do anything she doesn’t choose to do.”

“What if she doesn’t come back?” Steve managed to ask a little more calmer than before.

“Her choice,” Tom read aloud. He shook his head at the statement, “Maybe. But she can’t stay here forever.”

“She isn’t welcomed to do so,” Tasja interjected. “Mr. Voorhees and Lady Hammonds are leaving the grounds in a few hours. As will the rest of the staff. There would be nobody here. The house will be in lock-down.” 

Tom shook his head at whatever Myers had conveyed. Myers’ expression went cold. Tom couldn’t look at him anymore, preferring the high beamed ceiling than that glare. 

“I get what you are after, I don’t like how you are going about it,” Tom said after a while. He turned to Steve and Steph: “He’s wanting her to figure out things on her own.”

“She’s just been kicked out of her home. She needs to know there is somewhere she can belong,” Steph tried to give some advice

“With him, it might not be such a good option,” Steve told her. 

“She can stay with us until she gets on her feet,” Tom offered with a small pleading glance to the annoyed Myers. Myers told him something else, Tom gave a deep sigh. 

“What?” prodded Steve.

“He wondered if I was going to take in the other three as well, and that they are adults and not completely ignorant.” 

Myers dismissed Tom with a peevish snort and leaned back into the chair. 

“Fine,” Tom tossed his hands up. He turned to Tasja and told her: “If she shows up after we are gone and you have to kick her out, at least get her a ride to wherever she wants to go.”

“I am sure that my hosts will arrange for one, they would not wish for her to remain at the wall like a beggar.”

***

Julia had stared at the knife in her hand. It wasn’t a utility pocket knife, the kind that come with a file or a screwdriver attachment, it was just a knife. It was heavy in her hand and still warm from being in somebody else’s hands. She opened the blade. It didn’t look cheap, but it wasn’t like she knew the first thing about how knives were made or what would make the difference between a useful well-made knife and a fancy expensive piece of shit. It was sharp and didn’t look flimsy, that was the breadth of her knowledge. 

Julia palmed the knife, feeling the smooth scarlet red handle as she twisted it about in her grip. She held it up before her face, letting her eyes follow down the blade and back up again. How much would it hurt if she were to just stick it in herself or glide it across her skin? She has accidentally cut herself with a knife before, more than once in the kitchen when preparing food. Those wounds tend to be on the fingers and hands and no deeper than a paper cut. She had taken vaccine shots before, but those are with tiny needles and the pain was over in a few hours at most. Would it be like when she tore her knee up when she fell off her bike? Would it feel like that? A pain that would burn and ache and never seem to fade away.

Why did he give her this knife? This knife was given to him, so he could… what? Become the weapon that the Cults told her he was? So he’d have a means to protect them… or maybe he could have killed them all? It, this knife, was a little bit of chaos introduced into the room like a stone dropping through the surface of the water. And he gave it to her.

It was the only thing he had ever given her. She might possess half of his DNA, but even that was stolen from him to create her. He had no say in her creation as much as she didn’t have a choice in being created. The people that wanted her, the same people that took away his life, had just abandoned her. They put her right into his hands… like he put this knife into hers. 

Julia could just throw the knife on the floor and… what? It didn’t matter if she kept it or tossed it away, she didn’t know what she was going to do next. She doubted that she could stay here. Geraldine didn’t strike her as the type of person that was looking for a novice apprentice, nor did Julia like the idea of going from one organisation to another. If she left here with… her father… what then? He’s not a very good person, let alone a good father. The one child he knew of, he didn’t raise… but he was here, he came because of Steven. 

Julia was alone in this empty dining hall. The glass wall overlooking a lawn, golf-course-green trim, and past that, just over the hill, the start of the woodlands, and beyond that a lake. Her eyes scanned over the view. She had never been camping, or fishing, or hiking, or any of those outdoor rustic type activities. She was a city girl, she never joined the girl scouts, she never sold cookies or learned how to sew or tie knots. If she wanted to start a fire, she would use a lighter instead of sticks. She couldn’t tell anybody which way was north. She did know what roads they took to get here, she would be able to follow them back. She might not have her car keys, that man Steve still had them, but she could walk to a highway and she still had her cellphone on her.

Julia took off the black robes, tossing them onto the back of a chair. She put the knife in her back pocket. She approached the windows, moisening her lips with her tongue nervously. She ran her fingers across the fame of each pane seeking a latch. There had to be a latch, there had to be someway to open these windows to let the air in. She found the pulley to crank up the window pane and started to turn it. The window groaned on its metal frame as the pane was lifted up from the floor. She ran. Ran across the flat green lawn. Ran over the side of the hill. Ran through the muddy ditch and into the woods.

Julia had fought her way through the brush until she reached the shore of the lake that was on the property. She followed along the side of the lake for a while, at least until she realized she was making a circle and was heading back to the mansion. She came across a pathway through the woods, a footpath not even wide enough for a four-wheeler to drive down. She had slowed down now, taking the path in a casual walk instead of the more determined one she took around the lake. The path took a meandering path until it came right to the outer wall. 

Julia guessed that she had to have been out here for an hour, it had to be after one-o-clock now. Nobody was calling her name nor was out looking for her. She knew Myers could find her if he wanted to. They had the robes she was wearing, there was probably a hair of hers that got left behind on it. She would never be able to hide from him if he ever wanted to see her, her anonymity was gone now. He knew of her and what she looked like. She had brothers and sisters that knew of her, met her even, and would wonder what had happened to her, they too will come for her… That was fine. If they wanted her, they can come to her. She wasn’t going to go to them… But first, she had to get away.

There HAD to be a gate or an exit somewhere. A drainpipe or a covert for a brook or stream perhaps. There was one gate she knew of, maybe it was still open from letting the Priests out. She just had to follow the wall and take whichever exit she could find first. 

It took another twenty minutes of following the sheer concrete block wall before she came to a bend in the wall. There was a small tower inside the wall covered in camo-colored nylon and hoisted up on a metal posts… she thinks it was called a blind? It was what hunters used when they are cowardly snipping off animals for no other reason than for sport. She’d only seen them in front of sporting goods stores, never actually out in the open. 

“Hello?” She called up to it. There wasn’t an answer, so she climbed up the ladder to look inside. With a rip, the velcro flap of the door came loose and she poked her head in. It was empty, like, nothing inside empty. She was hoping there’d be a tackle box or something to look through, but there wasn’t anything, not even an old blanket. She lowered back down to the ground, annoyed by the lack of finding something to satisfy her curiosity. She folded her arms across her body and went back to following the wall. 

It took her an hour-and-a-half to get from the mansion dining room window, run halfway around the lake, walk to the wall, to eventually find the entrance gate they had first arrived through. It would’ve been only 10min if she walked down the driveway in the first place. She knew about a mile down the road was the mansion itself, and about two miles on the other side of the wall was the gravel road. 

The gate was closed. She tried to pull it open, it was locked. She tried to squeeze herself through the rod iron bars, they were too close together for her to get more than her arm through. She shook at them to see if something was to come loose, nothing budged. She tried to climb it, but the angles were too sheer for her feet to find purchase and she slid back down. She kicked at it, hit it, screamed at it, again and again…. She crumpled down in the middle of the road, weeping in despair before the black gate. She wasn’t going anywhere.

Julia’s tears had eventually dried up, and she heaved in dry shuddering breaths. Her eyes were puffy and sore, she wasn’t able to hold the open, but she wasn’t tired. She was on her knees, jeans soaked through, dirty with mud and laced with cockaburs. She pressed against the cold gravel driveway, fists clenched and grasping at the loose white rock.

***

It was almost two-thirty in the afternoon by the time Geraldine showed up to tell them their arrangements have been set and their ride is ready to take them back to the motel they were gathered from. They asked her about some of the arrangements and what they would entail. Geraldine explained to them that most of them were legal contracts, a lawyer had to be contacted to finalize the details and a final invoice will be sent to all parties involved to be signed and returned in the following months. It would behoove them to make sure Stephanie and Steven were to pick a date of marriage in the following 120 days or else the contracts will be rendered void. 

Geraldine had volunteered herself to go with them so she could explain anything to their families who were not in attendance. Saying that it would get them use to her presence and give any of them an opportunity to bring any questions up they were not able to ask in the prior formal setting. It was also her family’s vehicle that they are taking, and she would like for it to be returned. 

The vehicle itself was a maroon-colored passenger van, circa the 1990s, and not a speck of rust was on it. It sat ten people comfortably and they even provided a baby seat for Noah. It wasn’t until everybody started to enter the van when Julia’s presence was missed by the sorceress.

“Where’s the girl?” Geraldine asked, first to Tasja then again to the rest of the party.

Myers signed to her: Went for a walk. At the gate.

“He thinks she is,” Tom corrected.

Geraldine had time to change into less formal clothing, changing into a pair of mom-jeans, a flowery blouse, and black flats. Her long gray hair was pulled up into a bun, stylishly messy, and she had a pair of big round sunglasses perched on top of her head. She reached into her clutch bag and pulled out her cellphone. After a moment of swiping around on the device she confirmed: “She is there. We’ll just get her as we go.”

***

Julia didn’t hear the hiss and crackle of tires on gravel, but she did hear the squeak of breaks and the metal door unlatch and slide open. She didn’t raise her head from the ground as she was being approached from behind, hearing a solitary set of footsteps crunch on the rock and stop still beside her. She remembered those shoes, they were the same pair of brown shoes she had taken out of a fancy box earlier this morning. The socks were black and the pants legs a blue almost as dark… it was him, standing over her. 

“Move,” the word startled her. Julia didn’t think he could talk, he hadn’t made any effort to speak outside of sign language to the representatives nor around her earlier when it was just her, Steven, and him in the motel room. 

“Fucking bastard,” she breathed into the dirt, but she refused to get up.

He draped the duster over her, it swallowed her up whole in her curled up and prostrate position. Something else dropped down onto her back, she guessed it was the hat. He walked off again. He was doing nothing. What did she want him to do? Him to get mad at her? Kick her out of the way or lift her up bodily and toss her aside? Give her a reason to kick and scream and fight against what was going on…? He did none of those things. 

Why was she wanting to act like a child? She was twenty-two years old, almost twenty-three, she was old enough to drive, work, vote, drink, and go fight in a war. Dominique was right, she could just go get a job, support herself, and forget everything that has happened to her. But to forget would take time, and it isn’t something she could do right now, nor tomorrow, and maybe never. Memories are the wounds of the past, the pain will fade, but a scar would remain as a reminder… she didn’t know where she heard that before, it was a common saying if anything. 

“Girl,” it was the sorceress’s voice that called out to her now: “If you don’t get out of the driveway, we can’t leave. You’re blocking the gate.”

Fuck me, Julia thought to herself. They are just wanting her to get out of the way. There was nothing in her father’s actions or the sorceress’s words that offered her to come along with them. She pushed herself up onto her haunches, the hat slid off of her back and onto the ground, but the coat stayed on her shoulders. She turned to look over her shoulder at them, eyes still sore and bloodshot from crying. 

He was the only one outside the van. He hadn’t gone far from her, standing exactly between her and the van idling twenty feet away. He had taken off the suit jacket and had it slung over his left arm, the silver tie hung loose around his neck, and the first three buttons on the black shirt were undone, she could see the white undershirt, and some of the runic tattoos beneath that. He watched her, not moving, just waiting… For what? For her? He wasn’t going to say anything else, she couldn’t read sign even if he did. 

“You might be my father, but you’re not my dad,” she told him. He cocked his head slightly to the side, but nothing else has changed. He still watched her with an expression that was hard to read beyond neutral. 

Julia pursed her lips, narrowing her eyes at him. She climbed to her feet, the coat falling to the gravel. She stooped to wrap it over her arm and snatched up the hat with the other, placing it on her head so she didn’t have to hold it. She stepped to the side of the driveway. He didn’t move, he didn’t stop watching her. 

“What the fuck do you want from me, you creepy-ass mother fucker?” Julia snapped back. This guessing game of his was getting old fast. He moved this time, even if it was just a turn of his head from her to the van. She frowned, she didn’t need to ask what that meant, he wanted her to get in the van. 

“I have two feet, I can walk,” she said. 

He turned back around, this time he did have a definite emotion on his face: incredulous, if not annoyed at her boast. 

“I have a credit card and a cellphone,” she then told him. “I don’t need to go with you.”

He paused, studying her carefully. He abruptly walked back to the van and climbed in, not even giving her a wave or a backwards glance. There was some commotion inside the van about his return without her. Tom poked his head out of the van then, a pleading and sorrowful look in her direction. When she folded her arms and gave them all the cold shoulder, she heard the door slide closed. 

There was a buzz then, followed by a loud crank and a clash. The clasps holding the gate shut, popped back down into the ground and it rolled open. Julia walked around to the other side of the gate that she threw her frustrations at moments before. 

The van rolled slowly forward. Geraldine was driving it, the older woman leaned her head out of the window: “Be mindful of the bears.”

Julia started: “Bears?”

“This is a wilderness,” she waved a hand about. “It’ll be about an hour before you get to the main road, and another two until an Uber comes to get you. So, take care, little one.”

“Get in the van,” it was the woman Stephanie that told her this, practically demanded her to. “We can drop you off somewhere.”

“I’ll be fine,” Julia insisted, more so now. She didn’t want to be told what to do, not right now. It was bad enough to be humiliated in front of them, she wanted to skip the “ride of shame” with them. 

“You’re not fine,” she replied. 

“Go away,” was the retort. 

“You’re going to be my sister-in-law, I have to drag your ass home!”

“Bitch you don’t,” Julia quipped. 

“Look, I might have given birth yesterday, but I swear to God, I’ll hog-tie you and toss you in the back.”

“You are a fucking munchkin,” and Julia pulled out the pocket knife that was given to her a couple hours ago by Myers and pressed the release on it, punctuating the statement with a click. “You better fucking leave me alone, all of you.”

Steph glared at her through the rolled down window, as did that girl’s father Steve. Tom had his hands over his face, unwilling to show whatever embarrassing look could be plastered on it. Her father, that bastard, was practically preening, a little sly crooked smile on his face. He hadn’t once looked at her through this entire exchange. He was leaned back in his seat, eyes closed as if basking in the moment. If she was eaten by a bear this evening, she would die seething with that last image of him gloating over some invisible victory seared into her brain.

The gate reeled close and went through the noisy process of relocking. Julia turned to watch it, and when she looked down the road again, the van was fifty-paces ahead of her and the distance was growing, she would have to jog to keep up with it. She didn’t and let it meander down the road without her. If she felt sorry for herself tomorrow, she still had Steven’s phone number, and the phone numbers of her other siblings saved onto her phone. She would rather call one of the latter three first anyways before she further humbled herself before this lot today. 

So, she walked.

***

Jennifer’s phone rang. She fumbled with getting it out of her purse. It was Steve. She swiped several times at the stubborn green-ring before it picked up. “Steve? Where are you?”

“We’re on our way back right now,” he answered. 

The phone was taken from him and Steph spoke up: “Hi mom.”

“Oh my God! Stephanie! Are you alright? Did they do anything to you and Noah?”

“Noah’s fine. And they didn’t hurt anything other than my pride,” she groused. 

“Oh…?” Jennifer didn’t quite understand, but at least her husband, daughter, and grandson were coming home in one piece. “Is everything else ok?”

“Nobody died or got hurt, but there is still a lot that we need to talk about.”

“About what?”

“Is Steven around?”

“No. He’s out with Roy and Brian getting food. He was getting depressing to be around, moping around the hotel and wearing holes in their carpet with his pacing.”

“We’re going to be there in about twenty-minutes: are they going to be back by then?”

“I can call them, or do you want to?”

“He’s going to freak out if I call him out of the blue.”

“I can call Steven,” Tom’s disembodied voice offered from the side.

“I’d rather talk to him in person than on the phone,” she said to Tom. “There’s just some things you can’t tell people on the phone.”

“You can then distract him with the baby if the conversation goes south,” Steve snarked in the background.

“Dad,” Steph scolded him. 

“What did you guys tell them to let you and Noah go?” Jennifer asked. She at least wanted an answer to that because it’ll likely be brought up when she told Steven that they are safe. 

“Well…” Steph hesitated. She took in a deep breath and blurted out: “I had to agree to marry Steven or they’ll come back and take Noah for real next time.”

Jennifer processed the information, rolling it around in her head. That was something that Steph should tell him in person, if not in a group. 

“Mom?”

“Well, he isn’t a bad person. But is it something you want?”

Steph went quiet for a moment, “I don’t really think I can answer that right now… I just want to do what’s best for Noah.”

“You do love him right?”

“Yes,” she sighed. 

“Other than his family-issues, has he done anything to you that--”

“No, of course he hasn’t,” Steph interjected. “And speaking of which, it would’ve been nice to know what was going on with our own.”

“I should've done better,” Jennifer felt a pang in her heart, the knowledge that she had failed her children and they were not prepared enough. She wanted to bury the past, pretend it didn’t matter anymore… but sometimes the dead won’t stay dead, not in their family. 

“You did what you thought was right,” she assured her mom. It was little consolation. Steph also tried to do what she thought was right, but made the choice based on incomplete information-- information that Jennifer wished she had provided. 

“Come soon. Take care.”

“We will.”

Jennifer watched as the icon on the phone turned to “Call Ended: 08:44.” She flipped through the icons on her phone and found her recent call list. She picked out Steven’s phone number and gave it a ring. 

***

Steven almost fainted in the middle of the supermarket when the phone call from Jennifer came. Stephanie and Noah were alright and nobody was hurt in the process of getting them back. He tried to pry more information out of her, but Steph wanted to talk to him in person about what happened and didn’t give her all the details. It didn’t stop him from trying. Jennifer told him not to forget to pick up some newborn-sized diapers and baby wipes before hanging up the phone on him. 

Steven became almost unbearable to be around with all of his excitement. He tried to call Steph’s phone, but got a “Phone Unavailable” message, the same one he’s been getting for the past day when he dialed the number. He texted Tom, didn’t get a response right away, and when that happened it was a simple (we’ll be at motel soon) message. He wanted to hurry around the store, hurry through the checkout, hurry to the car, hurry back to the motel… He felt like if he stopped talking, stopped moving, he would start to cry out of sheer euphoria. Roy and Brian had a hard time keeping him focused on anything and him from leaving them behind. 

When they pulled up to the motel everybody was in the parking lot crowded around an unfamiliar red van. Steven scanned their faces to see if Stephanie was among their ranks. There was an older woman in among them that he didn’t recognize, she was having a conversation with his father in sign. She had stopped when the car approached, he too turned to face them. Roy hadn’t stopped the car all the way before Steven jumped out of it. He jogged over to their group, he gave a quick wave to his father, but made a bee-line to the van where Tom, Steve, and Jennifer huddled together before the sliding door. 

“Stephanie?” Steven asked.

“Here,” the answer came from inside the van. Steph sat beside a baby carrier, and appeared to have been in the process of detaching it from the seat. 

“Let me help with that,” he offered, climbing into the back beside her. 

“I can do it,” she casually told him.

“I know you can, I just want to see him,” he replied.

“Oh. Ah,” she sat back and let him finish. 

Steven gave her a smile and a soft kiss on her cheek, “Hey, I missed you too.”

“We’ll just leave you guys alone,” Tom suddenly announced.

Steven turned to the others and smiled, he was about to start crying: “Thank you. For everything.” 

“Hey, no problem. We would’ve done anything to get them back,” Mr. Freeman assured the younger man, giving his shoulder a firm pat.

“Come up stairs when you both are done. Dinner would be ready,” Jennifer added. 

“Oh, what are we having? I’m starving!” asked Tom as the three of them departed. “You know, for being rich assholes they didn’t have very much to eat.” 

“Lunch is meant to be a light meal, Mr. Doyle,” the stranger interjected. 

It was the first time Steven took a moment to study this woman. Right away he was getting warning signals, she was a sorceress, a very powerful one. She made a flick of her fingers and a shield was thrown up, cutting him off from getting more from her. 

“Who are you?”

“I’m your new Auntie Geri,” the sorceress had made a partial motion to face him, a broad grin appearing on her red-painted lips. She tipped down her round sunglasses to peer over them at him, “I look forward to having a conversation with you, Steven Doyle, when things have settled. I am sure by then there’ll be a lot more you’d like to ask.”

“Yeah, sure,” Steven murmured. 

“Until later,” she inclined her head. She hooked her arm around Myers arm, he pulled it away. She grabbed hold again, he squirmed free again. It was like watching two children fight when their parents want them to pretend to be nice for a photograph. She hissed through her teeth: “They don’t need any more company at this time. Be courteous.”

Myers looked between her, then to Steven, and back to her again. He took his arm from her and walked away on his own. She hooked her thumbs into the front pockets of her jeans and followed behind him.

“Awh, he made a friend,” Steph cooed, heavy on the sarcasm. 

“Where’d she come from anyways?” he cautiously eyed the retreating figure of the sorceress. 

“She’s a Voorhees. She’s assigned to be our Miss Havisham.” 

“Didn’t the escaped convict from the first chapter turn out to be the actual benefactor?”

“Yeah, what’s-his-face was giving money to Pip and was the girlfriend’s actual dad too.”

Steven hummed. “Didn’t Pip like keep missing the girl in the end? She’d always end up married to somebody else every time he came home.”

“In the original ending,” she said. “The editor said it was too depressing.”

“So either ending could be possible,” Steven gave a small thoughtful chuckle. He sat down in the seat between her and the baby carrier. He leaned over to look at the sleeping baby, still napping from the car ride. He ran a finger across Noah’s pink cheeks. 

“No, not right away,” she said. “There is only one.”

“Which is that?”

“We’re to be married.”

Steven wasn’t surprised, just a little bit unsure of the question: “Are you asking?”

“It was a stipulation,” she sighed. Steph waved her hand to the grand scheme of things: “The Runic Cults and the Order of the Dead agreed to let Noah and myself go if we do.”

Steven was hurt for real this time, right in his pride and his heart. “It isn’t something you want?”

“I mean… I love you,” she assured him, “I just… I don’t know… We had lives going in two different directions. You are wanting to run into danger, and I was running from the danger.”

Steven rubbed at his lips, his fingers scratching against the stubble on his chin. He leaned back and reached into his front pocket. He pulled something out and held his closed fist towards her. 

“What is it?” She asked.

“I wanted to give this to you last year, I never had the guts to take it back,” he opened his hand. It was a ring, a silvery ring, a simple band with three clear blue stone facets.

“You’re wanting to get married back then?”

“It’s why I told you everything.”

Steph cautiously plucked the ring from his palm and turned it over in her fingers. She could feel the heat on her face and the burning in her eyes before the tears came. She gave a sniff, unable to hold it back any more. She shuddered and buried her face into his chest. He kissed the top of her head. He took the ring from her, held her left hand in his, and placed the ring on her finger.

“I still want to marry you, I didn’t need to be told,” he cupped her face with his large hands, brushing away the tears on her cheeks with his thumbs.

“I’m so scared,” she wept.

“I am too,” he gave her a smile, his own face wet with tears. 

“What are we going to do now?” she asked.

The tension was broken by the murmuring cries of the baby waking up beside them. Noah made a few heaving moans before he started crying in earnest. Steven unfastened the harness around the bundle and lifted the baby into his hands. The two-day old looked even tinier in his father’s broad arms, Noah easily sat in his palms. Steven beamed at holding the baby, his baby, for the first time, even if Noah was discontented and was more concerned with his own immediate needs. 

“I believe, for the next twenty years, we are going to be doing our best to raise this little person.”

“That’ll be fine with me,” she agreed resting into the crook of his arm, Noah held between them. 

***


End file.
